In defence of food tastings

I recently participated for the first time in a food tasting, and the only real conclusion I could come to is that I am not very good at them. All a bit too highbrow for a typical red meat Anglo Saxon like me. And who thought up all those adjectives like “earthy overtones” or “hints of juniper“, and my favourite – “wood chips” to describe food anyway?

To be fair, I could be better at it. After all, I possess most of the skills required – my taste buds work fine, my grasp of English is sufficient to provide myriad adjectives, and anyone who knows me is aware of my keen interest in food. So what is the problem?

Recall.

Confused? Well to understand, you must crawl back to when you were a little child. Do you remember any of those early food milestones? The first almond, pancake, fairy floss, sausage, spaghetti (or the foodies’ favourite – the quintessential olive).

Remember the rush or trepidation as you bit into this new morsel only to discover a whole new taste experience? Suddenly you were confronted not only with a flavour not previously experienced, but a lack of tools to properly explain it.

(Watch how funny children’s descriptions of new foods can be. My 5 year old still tells me all pasta tastes “twirly whirly”).

Without trillions of life experiences to tap into, it can be very difficult to impart to another what a flavour is really like.

One could, like a child, simply state that a particular olive oil tastes “yummy”. A little better might be “fruity” or “nutty”. But if told “this oil is reminiscent of the smell of apple and cinnamon pie cooking in the oven”, you may be interested enough to buy a bottle. And by the time you get it home, you might even have a few ideas about what to do with it.

Which leads us back to the reason I am not great at food tastings.

Sadly, the Anglo Saxon diet often includes wine in questionably large quantities. They say in wine there is truth – the truth being we are born with a finite number of brain cells, and unfortunately once gone, they don’t grow back.

Trawling through a trillion life experiences trying to snatch that exquisite taste analogy in the time it takes to swirl a snifter of oil around your mouth before the stomach acids hose away all trace of flavour takes serious RAM. The laptop in my head runs a little slower than some – ideally configured for spitting out witty dinner-party anecdotes in a timely fashion….. or so it has led me to believe.

So, talking about food in terms of pithy adjectives is not highbrow at all – it is just simply the best linguistic way we can express the sensations of taste and flavour. Go on, give it a go. It may take some time to develop your food vocabulary, but it will lead to a better understanding of why you like certain foods or brands of foods.
And while you are at it, appreciate the fact that although children may possess faultless recall, they have far fewer interesting memories to draw upon.

Written by John Molloy