Selecting a Wine that Pleases Your Palate

There’s nothing exact or scientific in selecting a wine or even grading a wine even though it can be made to seem that way. The sad truth though is that many wines are graded and recommended to the normal person by a panel of experts, who most times won’t even necessarily agree amongst themselves. A good overall opinion is then taken and the grading is given.

Don’t get me wrong the experts of the wine world know a whole lot more about selecting a wine and wine tasting and grading than I ever will, but that doesn’t mean that they’re infallible or that they can’t have an off day like the rest of us. Besides, who’s to say that their interpretation of a certain wine will be the same as your interpretation?

This is true in most things of life and if you ask someone very close to you and whose opinion you value, what something as simple as chocolate tastes like, you’ll get a very different answer to your own. What happens here is that perception and reality of any given thing is always going to be different to yours.

Yes, you might both perceive what you see and taste as chocolate, but your reactions to it will be special to you. Just as what you taste when you selecting a wine won’t be the same for everyone. Some people might get a hint of berry, while others will definitely try their hardest to find the berry flavor or smell in the wine, and be unable to. Again this is mainly due to the fact that what they might associate as a berry smell might not be what you’re associating it with.

So selecting a wine is an entirely personal matter. But until you can get to the stage where you feel comfortable with choosing your wines based solely on your likes and dislikes, the expert guides and advice are a good place to start. As long as you take these only to be guides and not the Holy Grail of wine guides.

After tasting a few wines you will naturally enough put aside the wines which don’t agree with your palate, and you will get to know intimately the wines which you do like. Also another thing that you’ll notice is that as you progress along your taste buds will change and you might later find yourself selecting a wine which you discarded in the beginning.

That’s a natural part of learning and growing along with your wine experiences. Although I was guzzling down any wine that I could get my hands on before I started on my wine trials and tribulations, in the beginning I found that I didn’t really like the heavy reds like Cabernet Sauvignon. I preferred the lighter reds and even the dry whites. I know for a fact that the sweet dessert wines weren’t to my liking, just as I stayed away from the sweeter whites.

Then again in the selecting a wine process you should also take into account such things as preference of your guests if you have any, the type of meal you’re having, light or heavy, and whether you want to experiment just yet or not. And let’s not forget the whole price factor. If a good wine is out of your range, then you almost definitely won’t go for it and will instead have to stay within the constraints of your budget.

Muna wa Wanjiru is a web administrator and has been researching and reporting on internet marketing for years. For more information on Selecting a Wine, visit his site at Selecting a Wine

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