Knowing What You Like

That's important, isn't it?  Knowing what you like?  That is, as opposed to going along with whatever everyone else likes.  Yet the pressures are there to go along with others and fit in with your peers.  We're all guilty of caving in to the desires of others.  We all want to be liked.

I think all of us start our wine adventure with overwhelming insecurity.  We usually start with a friend's sweet white wine recommendation and stay there until another friend let's us know it's okay to move on.  What satisfied us with our first wine-love was the sweetness, and that's okay, so maybe our next wine-love is something less sweet and in time we're knocking on the door of truly dry wine.   

What is concurrently happening as we wean ourselves off of sweetness is we start tasting more of the intrinsic flavors of wines.  If the palate-satisfaction is there with each new venture then we keep going and in the process we're educating our palates without even realizing it.  

Now for the dark side.  Are we sure we are tasting what we think we are?  We're not all gifted with an optimal palate.  What if we don't have the sense of taste we think we have?  Is some of this self-deception or worse yet, pretension?  Could it be wine industry "smoke and mirrors?"  

I think at some point after hobbling through some wine potholes along our journey we decide we have arrived and this is where we are meant to be.  We know what we like.  And it's a good thing to know what we like.  It makes my job easier.  But if you think there might be something else around the next bend then lets get to work and together we'll see what's next on the journey.  Maybe we decide it's the journey itself that we like.