Do You Have a Good Palate?

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Matt Kramer says that spotting the '82 Mouton in a blind tasting is not the mark of a great palate.

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Let's get real: Who's to say?

Matt Kramer
Posted: April 3, 2012

Some years ago I moved into an apartment in San Francisco, one of those arrangements with two units per floor with a connecting deck.

I was spending a week painting the apartment, and my neighbor, who shared his apartment with his brother, stopped by to invite me over to their place for a glass of wine. I thanked him and said that I'd be over after I cleaned up a bit.

When I went over, I was handed a glass of wine. It was a Napa Cabernet, if I recall correctly. I tasted the wine and said nothing.

"So, what do you think of this wine?"

"It's all right," I replied, as neutrally but politely as I could.

This was not the expected response. I soon learned that they worked in restaurants, liked wine and considered themselves knowledgeable. They were put out.

"Well, what do you know about wine?"

As good luck would have it, lying on the coffee table was a copy of Wine Spectator. Saying nothing, I reached over and opened it to the page with my column (which sports a mug shot of you-know-who), turned the magazine around and pushed it toward them.

You can imagine their reaction. We all laughed heartily and bonded on the spot. Ever since, we've all dined out on that story.

I mention this only because it's one of those ridiculous situations where it would seem that you could "prove” that you have a good palate. Of course, having a column in a wine magazine proves nothing of the sort, but it's a credential of a kind.

This brings me to today's headline: "Do You Have a Good Palate?" Allow me to answer that. Most folks decide that you have a good palate when your judgment of a wine agrees with theirs.

Given this, you can reasonably ask: Does such a thing as a "good palate" even exist? Or is it all just a matter of consensus?

I do believe that such a thing as a "good palate" exists. And no, I don't think it's all a matter of whether you and I (or anybody else) concur in our respective opinions. So what, then, makes for a good palate?

The usual expectation involves taste acuity, the ability to play "I Spy" all day long, spotting the scent of blackberries, red currants, coffee (light roast or dark) and a seemingly endless array of precise-seeming descriptors.

Understandably, a lot of folks think that this ability to tease out all these "distinctions" is what makes for a good palate. Put bluntly, it ain't so. It's a bit of a parlor trick, really. Anyone can do it by paying attention to the smell and taste of what's around us (chalk dust, strawberries, pencil shavings) and then applying those remembered associations to what's in your glass. It does, however, remind us about what is so wonderful about wine: namely, that unlike, say, orange juice, it offers such shadings.

"A genuine good palate has both the capacity and the experience to deliver good judgment. It's not enough merely to weigh a wine. Instead, the question is: What does it add up to?"

The other parlor trick that most people associate with a "good palate" is the ability to identify a wine blind, i.e., to name the variety, the producer, the village, the vintage and the color of the winemaker's socks without seeing the label.

Now, I'm the first to admit that it sure is impressive to see this trick performed well. But if you ask just about any really experienced wine drinker, especially professionals, you'll soon discover that, to a man and woman, this pull-the-rabbit-out-of-the-hat ability is viewed with envy but with little belief that it's the defining feature of a "good palate." Calling the wine blind is not so much a trick as it is a matter of considerable experience allied with an admirable ability to focus on "landmarks" within a wine that reveal its pedigree.

In fairness, it's not nothing. You do need to have been around the wine block to pull it off with any frequency. You also need to be almost surgically analytical, slicing away all extraneous, distracting elements of the wine (such as "Gee, this really tastes good") to get at the "giveaway" elements that will help you identify the wine.

As many successful blind tasters will attest, the process can be surprisingly swift, resulting in what's often described as a "click" of recognition. (My experience, for what it's worth, is that your first guess is likely your best guess.)

But being a great blind taster doesn't mean you have a "good palate," any more than being a technically proficient surgeon necessarily makes you a good doctor. I'll always remember asking Larry Stone, a sommelier of extraordinary accomplishment and the best blind taster I've ever known, if he'd ever met anyone better at blind tasting than himself. (By the way, Stone is returning to his former position as sommelier of Charlie Trotter's in Chicago for that restaurant's swan song last few months before it closes Aug. 31.)

Larry replied that he indeed had met a better blind taster. "Who?" I exclaimed in genuine surprise.

"Oh, you don't know him," he replied. "I'd never met him before either. We were at a big tasting where the labels were covered and this guy just went down the line, bang, bang, bang, saying ‘Mouton '82,’ ‘Ridge Montebello '75,’ and so forth. I'd never seen anything like it.

"But then," Larry continued, "after the tasting I introduced myself to the guy and we got to talking. And I quickly realized something: He had no ability to describe a wine. Or even analyze a wine. If he hadn't had it before, he was lost. He couldn't put words to a taste or analyze a wine. He just had this crazy-good ability to remember everything he had ever tasted and file it away in his head. It was impressive as hell but didn't show any understanding of wine."

So what, then, makes for a good palate? Many features are at work. Larry Stone believes, with reason, that you cannot have a good palate without the ability to properly analyze a wine. "If you can't recognize whether a wine has low or high acidity—and some people can't, it seems—then you can't have a good palate. You've got to be able to properly analyze a wine and be able to put words to it."

That noted, I would submit that a genuine good palate has both the capacity and the experience to deliver good judgment. It's not enough merely to weigh a wine, as it were. Instead, the question is: What does it add up to?

It's not enough to accurately analyze. You have to have insight. And to acquire that takes not just experience, but also an ability almost to empathize. (This is why someone can have a good palate for, say, Cabernet but not for Pinot Noir.)

Insightful palates find the (sometimes hidden) thrill of a wine, that electric spark that makes it stand out from other, seemingly similar, wines. How many times have you tasted with someone who has just such an insightful palate and, after hearing his or her appreciative discussion, returned to the wine and seen it anew? It's happened to me many, many times.

Judgment and insight are the hallmarks of a good palate. Everything else is a technicality.

Member comments 9 comment(s)

Ron Brooks — alexandria va — April 4, 2012 8:36am ET

Excellent column as usual on a topic not usually discussed because most of us in the trade think we have pretty good palates and don't wish to be told otherwise.
I would add to this collection the taster who only looks for flaws. I pity them because I don't think they ever experience the pleasure of wine. Instead they focus only on things like incompatible yeasts and the one clone out of five that is contributing a unpleasant tannic effect. And it's hard to call them on it because who really knows if they are on to something or just masking insecurities about their abilities or trying to make a name for themselves. In my experience this person tends to get fired a lot because they can't talk to regular customers about wine and the can't put together a coherent wine list because their tastes are so esoteric.

Sam Bremer — Minneapolis, MN — April 4, 2012 12:37pm ET

Thanks for the column Matt, I would also add that someone with a "Good" Palate can and should be able to understand the palates of others. Especially for restaurant sommeliers or wine shop clerks the ability to be able to understand what the customer is looking for and find that wine that suits thier palates is maybe the best end result of having a "good" palate. Even for people having a dinner party and understanding their guest list and their palates can make for a truely memorable evening.

Harvey Steiman — San Francisco, CA — April 4, 2012 2:11pm ET

In my view a good taster can explain what it is about a wine that makes it distinctive, what makes it what it is. It requires the ability to recognize its component parts and appreciate how they work together—or not. That includes aromas and flavors, but also acid, tannin, sweetness, intensity, delicacy, length, and more.

Alejandro Duclaud — Mexico City — April 4, 2012 7:33pm ET

A good palate has to be defined as the ability to enjoy wine, which always turns you into a fan. You just enyoy it so much. Anything on top of that falls somehow within a discipline of trying to abstract the reasons of a true joy and use words associated to sometimes unrealted concepts to describe the experinece. Its like trying to explain why we enjoy the music of Mozart by relating to its technical or other merits. Who cares?

Vince Liotta — Elmhurst Illinois — April 5, 2012 3:43pm ET

Well done, Matt, for two reasons. Firstly, bringing in a second (or third) individual's experience and insight is helpful not only to your piece and formulating your ideas, but of course, also to your readers.

Secondly, your notion of empathy is a great one. Personally, I grew up on Old World, mostly french wine, preferably aged 5 to 25 years or more. But as a retailer in middle class suburbs, if that is all we sold we'd be on tough times. For me, the challenge is not only to appreciate what I enjoy and strive to share this with others, but also to understand the tastes of others and what makes them tick.

Tom

Joshua Kates — Indiana — April 5, 2012 8:03pm ET

I, too, agree, as usual a thoughtful and provocative column. The one aspect that I would underscore, which you mention Matt, but perhaps downplay, is experience with the type of wine in question and having tasted enough of it, and enough exemplary instances of it, to evaluate the single case (or glass-ha ha) that you have before you. It seems to me, you can just get *it* about certain kinds of wine after a while, but you have to have tried enough and tried enough good ones, though doubtless the ability to empathize with a type comes in here as well. I should mention that the single best piece of writing I know about judgements of taste of all kind, was written by David Hume in 1760: "Of the Standard of Taste," a short essay, which is still comprehensive and convincing and even contains a wine example.

Michael Myette — Sacramento, CA USA — April 8, 2012 7:18pm ET

I appreciate that you don't minimize the technical aspects, which are necessary, but insufficient, to confer one a good palate. The empathy, or gestalt experience and an understanding of the component parts is what, I think, matters.

That said, those that can identify a wine blind, especially a non-iconic one (01 d'yquem, 47 cheval are so distinctive that it doesn't take a genius....) are pretty darn impressive, though. You suggest that ability is relatively common among those with years of experience? I'm relatively young in wine years (41 yo this year) and have been tasting and collecting for 15 years, and I can't call out a specific wine blind with any reliably. I would not be able to taste a Mondavi Oakville cab along side a Kathryn Hall cab and tell which was which blindly, though I have had multiple vintages of both wines.

Perhaps I just am not very good (A criticism I would accept), but I am curious just how common that taste recall precision is among professional and avid amateur tasters. Thoughts?

Matt Kramer — Portland, OR — April 9, 2012 12:03pm ET

Mr. Myette: You ask "How common is taste recall precision among professional and avid amateur tasters?"

I can only offer my own impression, but it seems to vary widely. This business of identifying wines blind is, as I wrote, not quite a parlor trick. But it is something that you can train for, which is precisely what aspirants to wine credentials such as Master Sommelier or Master of Wine do. Acquiring palate acuity is achievable by almost anyone, as our physiological abilities are more alike than not.

Rajat Parr, who is the wine director of the Michael Mina Group and co-owner of the restaurant RN74 in San Francisco, is a talented sommelier with a reputation as an exceedingly good blind taster.

In a 2007 essay he wrote for Wine Spectator titled "The Art of Blind Tasting", Mr. Parr described how he and several other sommeliers get together regularly to engage in cutthroat blind tastings.

"We typically get together late at night and try to stump each other with difficult wines, the one constant being that the wines are classic examples."

As for how he (and others) become good at, I can do no better than to quote Mr. Parr from that same essay, "The Art of Blind Tasting":

"How do you get so precise? Our mind acts as a Rolodex and the trick is, first, filling it with wine profiles and, second, being able to access them on command. Usually a good blind taster can identify a wine he's had before, but many factors can send him off course: the condition of the bottle, the temperature of the wine, the glassware and finally our mood. Great blind tasters will even be able to recognize those factors and still judge accurately.

So here is what I think is essential to know about tasting wines blind:

Start by examining the color of the wine. This will tell you a lot, such as how concentrated the wine is, whether it comes from a thick-skinned or thin-skinned grape, how high the alcohol level is and how old the wine may be. Pinot Noir is almost always a lighter red than Cabernet or Merlot, which are both dark red, while Syrah usually has a purple hue.

The nose of the wine will tell you 75 percent of the time what the variety is. Pinot Noir smells more like cherries and strawberries, whereas Cabernet Sauvignon is more like cassis and plum. Then there are many nuances among regions; Pinot Noir from Burgundy will be more earthy while California Pinot will typically show riper fruit.

The palate should confirm all the aromas on the nose. Most of the time, this helps the most in identifying the region. For example, California Cabernet will be fuller and higher in alcohol than Bordeaux, which will generally have more acidity and tannins.

It is very important to gauge the acidity. Certain grapes are higher in acidity than others. For example Nebbiolo is always high in acid (2003 is a good example of this—very ripe wines, but the acids still showed through).

It's also very important to pay attention to tannins, which are perhaps most helpful in determining the vintage. If we were served a pair of 1989 and 1990 red wines from Burgundy, the 1990 would have more tannins. A vintage is a signature upon the wine—it remains consistent across wines from the same area and is a giveaway even as the wine ages."

Mr. Parr's description reveals perfectly what's involved in tasting wine blind and then accurately identifying it. It shows the sort of discipline, acuity and substantial experience required. As I wrote in my column, this is not nothing, to be sure.

That acknowledged, the issue of judgment still remains. Put bluntly, I know some very good blind tasters who, in my opinion, are not especially good judges of the merit of a wine. For me, it's judgment that counts. If it were otherwise, then all wine critics would agree with each other about all wines--and we surely don't!

Don Evans — Austin, TX, USA — April 10, 2012 3:47pm ET

Another useful discussion, Matt, full of the good sense and intelligence that make me enjoy your columns so much. And the comments (including your own reply to My. Myette) compliment the topic beautifully. I was interested that no one appears to have noticed what was my first thought on your opening anecdote about the apartment incident. Anyone who has been dealing with painting an apartment is surely not in a good position to make judgments on wine without a substantial rest period. It would be interesting to know if your opinion of the wine changed on later tastings once the assault of paint fumes dissipated. While my point is perhaps a minor and obvious one, it should be borne in mind that in making aesthetic judgments of wine or anything else, the context of the judgment may be more important than we realize.

Thanks also to Mr. Kates for his reference to Hume on Taste. The example he refers to from Hume's essay is most apropos to this discussion:

"It is with good reason, says Sancho to the squire with the great nose, that I pretend to have a judgment in wine: This is a quality hereditary in our family. Two of my kinsmen were once called to give their opinion of a hogshead, which was supposed to be excellent, being old and of a good vintage. One of them tastes it; considers it; and, after mature reflection, pronounces the wine to be good, were it not for a small taste of leather, which he perceived in it. The other, after using the same precautions, gives also his verdict in favour of the wine; but with the reserve of a taste of iron, which he could easily distinguish. You cannot imagine how much they were both ridiculed for their judgment. But who laughed in the end? On emptying the hogshead, there was found at the bottom an old key with a leathern thong tied to it."

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