? Even umami: Researchers for the first time have mapped how the tongue tastes while tasting is going on. CNET reports that the study found that each taste bud contains taste cells for different tastes — sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami. But that that was only the beginning of what appears to be ground breaking work. Taste may also be affected by the blood cells surrounding the taste buds, “and involve an interaction between the food taken orally and blood composition,” said one researcher. If true, this work goes a long way toward explaining why wine tastes differently depending on who is doing the tasting. It’s not just that everyone’s taste buds are different, but that our blood is different. The story says more work needs to be done, including mapping the brain while tasting is gong on to see how everything fits together, but one conclusion is obvious: Scores, which didn’t make sense before, make even less sense if blood type and even circulation matter.
? “Honest” wine labels: No, not the Wine Curmudgeon’s other great crusade (though more on that soon), but wine humor from the Huffington Post — what if wine labels identified the wine by what we used it for? Hence, the label would says “Netflix & Pizza Night” or “His Tinder Profile Lied.” Sort of funny, in fact, but more importantly goes to a point we’ve discussed often on the blog: That wine is as much about occasion as it is pairings, varietal, or even what it tastes like.
? Experience matters: The Italian Wine Guy, always alert for an opportunity to teach the young people, shares his time with German wine impresario Rudi Wiest, “I cannot tell you how it feels, at this stage of my life, to sit in front of someone for four days and be tutored by a master. It is humbling. And it is invigorating. To have been on the wine trail for as long as I have and to feel there is something totally undiscovered in the wine world which is deep, intense and engaging, well it ?s as if I turned back the clock and started all over again.” Which, to me, is the point of wine. It’s the hunt; that is, that wine itself is neverending, and that I never know what I will find next. The day we stop looking, the day we’re content with 92-point toasty and oaky is the day we should give up wine and settle for sweet tea.
Reviews of wines that don ?t need their own post, but are worth noting for one reason or another. Look for it on the final Friday of each month.