Overview: New York-based sommelier and wine educator Sarah Looper advises against drinking water to cleanse the palate before tasting wine, stating it can interfere with the drink’s true flavor profile. Instead of relying on hydration to reset the mouth, experts recommend using patience and specific tasting techniques to adapt the palate for accurate evaluation.
The Full Story
If you want to experience a wine’s full range of flavors, sipping water before or between tastes may seem like a natural way to cleanse your palate — but a sommelier says it could keep you from tasting the wine as intended. Anything taken into the mouth before the first sip of wine is going to alter its true colors according to Looper. To judge a wine accurately, she recommends giving it a few tastes where the first sip sets the tone and allows for smelling the wine immediately.
Because we smell better with our mouths, putting those aromatic molecules on the mouth first helps adapt the palate to what the wine really is. This process is called retronasal olfaction, which happens when aromas from food or drink travel from the mouth to the nose, affecting how one perceives flavor. People’s palates also vary, pointing to differences in factors such as oral pH and taste sensitivity. What you put on your palate, whether it is a sugary and highly acidic and effervescent Coca-Cola, or a sip of something like an Old Fashioned that is really alcoholic and really sweet and woody, will totally jack your palate.
The key to resetting your palate isn’t water, but patience. You have to give yourself a little bit of time and then take a first sip of that wine, adapt your brain to what you’re tasting and then take a second sip. And it is that second sip, and even that third sip, that will really set the wine in your brain and on your mouth for what it’s supposed to be. The flavors in wine also evolve after it is poured and interacts with oxygen, so wine may taste different several minutes after the initial sip.
Consumer Takeaway
This guidance offers a clear protocol for the drinker based on stated behavioral specs rather than bottle specifications. On days when tasting wine in a professional capacity, Looper has a ritual comparable to a professional athlete preparing for game day. She will brush her teeth early and then have a black coffee early to reset her palate, followed by sips of water only on the way to the venue. A simple way to make the most of the experience is to smell the wine first, take a small sip, let it coat your palate, and then pause before taking a second sip to notice how the aromas and flavors develop.
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