Pushing The Palate

There are literally over 10,000 different wine varieties across the globe. The most popular wines alone make up a list of 32 different grapes and styles. Most people when they are first getting into wine will stick to far fewer varieties and only the ones that they have been easily exposed to and immediately enjoy. When I started getting serious about wine, all I cared about were big, bold reds like Malbec, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon and the occasional Merlot. These were the wines being poured at friends' parties, weddings, bottles on the shelves at the grocery store, wines with famous names on the label like Coppola. Low hanging fruit. It wasn’t until I met more serious enthusiasts and surrounded myself with people much further along in their wine journeys that I realized how much I was limiting my experience. My palate at the time wasn’t trained to enjoy anything other than wines that gave me a big punch in the face of fruit and tannin. Jammy was the key to my wine heart. It would take time and effort to retrain my senses to not just differentiate different styles of wine and varietals, but actually start to prefer them over my OG loves. 

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I never touched white wine in the early years and was convinced I never would enjoy them. I was ignoring more than fifty percent of the wines produced in the world. The only time I might have had a white wine was if it was the only option or sometimes on a hot summer day and it most definitely was either a Savignon Blanc or Chardonnay. I was getting much more serious about wine though and knew I was missing something because all of my wine geek friends were drinking plenty of white and raving about varieties I never even heard of like Riesling and Chenin Blanc. Then one day talking to one of these wine geeks who just so happened to be an actor in something I was producing, he said to me, if I push myself just a little that over time my palate will change and I’ll come around to drink just as much white wine as red. So, I did. I now drink roughly 40% white wine and 60% red. 

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To fully appreciate the world of wine you are going to need to do some work. I don’t mean just theory work (studying wine regions and winemaking) but more importantly pushing your palate beyond what you already enjoy to train it to enjoy some of these 10,000 plus other options. It will be a process of taking some risks and spending some money on wines outside your comfort zone. If you really want to explore the broader wine world and learn how to enjoy more wine than the ones you drink on the regular, you have to train your nose and palate. You’ll need to get out there and try wines you may have never heard of, hunt down wines that are hard to find where you live, revisit wines that maybe you have tried and hated. The more you expose your palate to new aromas and flavors and mouth feels the more it will shift and adjust allowing you to enjoy new aromas and flavors and mouth feels. Think of it like exposure therapy, only way more fun since after all, you’re drinking wine. 

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Don’t limit yourself to what you already enjoy. There is so much more joy to be had with wine when you have variety in your life.

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