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Palate Education
My palate remembers it well. I was four years old when I had my first wine experience. Honest. In fact, it was a wine and food paring: Manischevitz Concord Grape and gefilte fish on the first night of Passover. Did I know then that it was the cloying sweetness of this sacramental wine that offset the salty, briny, and slightly fishy components of the fish? Or was it an intuitive satisfaction---much the way that peanut butter is destined to be with jelly? While I am sure that my reaction was pure enjoyment, looking back on my fifteen years in the wine trade (teaching, buying, and writing) it is easy for me to romanticize this memory. Ah, four years old and my first wine and food epiphany! Red wine with fish, no less!
Some of my fondest and most vivid experiences are closely linked with wine, celebrating my twenty-fifth birthday with close friends and a bottle of 1967 Château d'Yquem not being the least of them. However, remembering the setting is often easier than recalling the subtleties of the wine. The plain truth is that it is hard work to build a palate memory.
Loosely defined, palate memory is the way in the way in which our brain catalogues and remembers taste. The same way that we anticipate the taste of a glass of fresh orange juice, envision the textural crunch and flavor of an M & M, or the full-bodied texture and flavor of a California Chardonnay.
My own "palate journey" began at a wine shop on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The same wine shop where my father had worked for more than thirty years. I learned quickly that wine knowledge isn't transmitted genetically. Customers approached me with innumerate questions and I was panic-stricken: How would you describe the weight of this wine? About 1 ½ pounds? "What is the difference between this Mosel Kabinett and this one from the Rheingau?" This one's $10.99 this one's $12.99. "Which Champagne would be the lightest and most delicate?" The least expensive? You may laugh, but the truth is that this future wine authority had no clue about wine.
Thousands of bottles of wine all around me and I hadn't a clue. So I swallowed my pride and put my nose to the grindstone, or rather, the glass. I purchased wine books and began attending trade tastings feverishly, often imbibing a hundred wines in an afternoon. I was thirsty for knowledge, quite literally, and my palate memory grew quickly as a result.
Soon, I was traveling on buying trips and visiting the great vineyard areas of Europe: Burgundy, Bordeaux, Tuscany, and Rioja. I would return to the States absolutely energized. It was during a trip to Alsace, France, when I had an experience that was to connect all of the dots. I was visiting one of the great growers of the region, tasting a Gewürztraminer, nibbling on an onion tart, and looking out on the vineyards in Riquewihr on a glorious clear day. Looking back on that day I felt an organic connection - to wine, to food, the soil, the people - everything around me. My palate education was paying off (I hate this line) Should you be unable to dedicate yourself to wine full-time there are things you can do to remember how wine tastes: Write down a note about every wine that you taste: Keep a journal, tack a list on the fridge, or dedicate a section in your appointment book. Include the complete name of the wine, the date that you drank it, and what food you served it with, for starters. Ask questions: when you are in a restaurant and need assistance, reach out to the waiter or sommelier. Anything that will make you remember and connect the experiences and flavors of wine. Heck, tie a rubber band around your wrist! When you can anticipate and begin to understand and synthesize the experience of taste experiences, it will only enhance your experience of wine.
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