Do we grow up – and if we do, does our taste do as well?

I can tell you that the life of a sommelier has many obstacles handy for us – depending In which situation or surroundings we are in. If it’s not the endless hours of work from the bottom to the top, running around like chased by Jason from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it’s the multiple hours of studying, tasting, shaping all out senses whilst we definitely never loose a good portion of sarcasm on our battlefield.

My life recently made me travel a lot – like now, when I’m sitting in an airport lounge at the other end of the world, waiting for my plane to arrive to bring me home.  

since travelling became one of the fundamental parts of my life since stepping into self-employment, I more and more get stuck in aiport lounges, at least for a tiny little bit. And I always wonder about the wine selection we find there – because in my humble opinion, usually it’s pretty sobering one down before even starting to take the first sip. And then I see people drinking one glass over the other and I’m like – how is that? Is it really because they like it, or they don’t care, or it’s for the sake of getting tipsy before the flight?

I think the letter two is definitely having a certain point in this discussion, me myself have trapped me recently chucking down some random sparkling wine being on the plane after almost missing it before, but in general – is it a thing of taste?

Bild: cucaracha_agency

Let’s take some steps back to “the baby steps” of our drinking behavior. I must say, and maybe some of you will feel a little less guilty next time you open a random “I can’t tell anyone else!” bottle, that you enjoy better than the expensive bottle that you’ve had last Christmas for that “special moment”), when I say, that my drinking career started with nothing else but Mädchentraube from a discounter – or even Weissweinschorle; with sweet soda to give it the ultimate headache guarantee. I actually loved my 2€ bottle from the mass shelf – and I don’t feel guilty about it.

When we are born, we more or less are the most sensitive in terms of taste, as we have the highest amount of taste buds as infants. With the years, we loose over half of it before it stagnates and we stay with more or less the same amount until we reach an age  of around 60 years.

But then again the question – how comes that some people taste better or less than others?

There are many theories about it, because theoretically, we have the same amount of taste buds. Maybe some more, maybe some less. For me, it makes total sense to look at the capability top connect different flavors to the things we know – meaning to be able to search through our drawers of memories and experiences. Why? Let me talk about two things. back to being an infant, I guess we have all realized, that babies and also slightly older kids are always leaning towards sweet flavors. This can easily traced back to the fact, that the first thing they “eat” is their mother’s milk when being breastfed – which is sweet and provides a feeling of care, safety, and comfort. The other example is a peraonal one from me. Sweet wines often come along with a certain spiciness and a good portion of saffron, which comes from a specific type of mold. For years, I was nosing and tasting Sauternes and I always had the feeling “I know that scent!” – but I couldn’t name it. My brain just couldn’t make the connection, because obviously, I knew saffron, but I couldn’t grab it in those moments. Not until I was at a Michelin star restaurant in Vienna where I had a saffron Crème Brulée as a desert – and I suddenly realized “ SAFFRON!”.

Now you will probably say – so when we all have more or less the same baseline in terms of the amount of taste buds we have, can we actually train our taste? And there I would absolutely say yes. But really, the easiest way to do that is to engage yourself with products. Touch everything. Smell everything. And really make it clear to yourself, that for example what you smell and taste right now is a crisp green apple. Tell it to yourself. And it will stick in your mind, the next time you will definitely know.

And so I think it is with wine – your taste grows up with you and the more experiences you have, the more it will differ from what you once thought is the ultimate and real thing. It’s like our character gets shaped by our experiences. I don’t want to say, that we necessarily always get to the point that we end up with a better quality, but we at least understand the variety of options better and also what we want and what we don’t want.

But then in the end we always come back to what gives us comfort in the situation we are in – like a sweet and pungent, dark red in front of the cheminee, like that crisp white that just jumps on top of that seafood in the sun. Like a mom, that gives us that warm and tight hug that lets us forget all the obstacles and monsters we fear around us – or like that easy drinking wine at the airport, that gets us ready to our long flight back home.