On 10-Nov-11 4:38 PM, Charles Haynes wrote:
Charles *is* a wine snob. Which is to say that, perhaps unfortunately,
I've "educated" my palate. I'm reminded of an article I read recently
(maybe here?) which talked about the dangers of educating ones palate.
The story included a guy who had been perfectly happy with $30/bottle
sake until he went to a sake tasting where he compared various sakes.
At the tasting he discovered that the sake he had been happy with
tasted terrible next to "good" sakes, and that he was no longer
satisfied with anything less than sakes at the $150/bottle level - and
he wasn't willing to pay that much for sake, so he stopped drinking it
entirely!
It was probably here [1].
My take: there is certainly a lot of bullshit involved (and some amount
of self-deception, as the various studies show).
Butbutbut: there is definitely *some* there there.
In the conceptually related space of fragrance, there are the 'noses'
[2] who create (or compose) perfumes [3] [4], or even people like
Genevieve Bjorn [5].
My point? There are certainly people who can detect (and can be trained
to detect) nuances in stuff (taste impressions, smell impressions, etc).
It makes as little sense to call the entire wine appreciation thing
false, as to call all of it true. :)
Udhay
[1] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/36306
[2] http://www.fragrantica.com/noses/
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/12/style/12iht-nico.html
[4] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Perfumer
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/health/views/19case.html
--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
