Transcriber: Eunice Tan Reviewer: David DeRuwe
"If you change the way you look at things,
the things you look at change."
I love that.
But it's a little limiting.
Why just limit it to the sense of sight and feeling?
Hmm.
Now, mindfulness.
Mindfulness we hear all the time in the media.
If you google the number of articles about mindfulness,
guess how many you'll find?
About five million.
And if you look up sense of sight,
sense of hearing,
or sense of touch,
each has about a million to a few million apiece.
But sense of smell and taste -
your palate -
combined is less than 40,000.
A tiny fraction.
Why is this?
I believe that we don't pay attention,
or we're not encouraged to pay attention,
to our palates.
I mean, certainly not like we do with our eyes.
Take, for example, color.
When we're young,
we're given a box of crayons, right?
And we know the blue-green crayon.
Why?
Because you've got "blue" and "green" written on the side, right?
Blue and green.
As we get older,
we know that there are a lot of other colors in between blue and green,
like teal, aquamarine, turquoise.
And artists -
there are way too many colors for names.
They just give them numbers after that.
But we don't have this vocabulary,
we don't have this universal vernacular,
for our palates.
And -
what I'd like to show you today
is how we can make our palates more powerful.
Our palate:
there's a hidden ability in there
that if tapped
can absolutely change your life.
I should know:
my first palate epiphany changed my life forever.
That was when I was working in investment banking.
I was working for Citibank in London,
and here we were at a business lunch.
They served an herb-crusted salmon
and a Sancerre.
Now, a Sancerre is a white wine from the Loire Valley of France.
I know this now;
I didn't know it back then, right?
So here we have this gorgeous white wine from the Loire Valley.
And this food and wine pairing just blew me away.
I was like Dorothy going from the world of black-and-white
to this wonderful, colorful world of Oz.
And I knew I needed to know more.
So what did I do?
I quit my six-figure salary,
moved back to New York,
and went to go work for a wine store in Greenwich Village.
This was my passion.
It's logical, right?
My second palate epiphany happened
when I brought home a $200 bottle of wine to share with my family.
Pretty nice, right?
I didn't tell them how much it cost; they would never have opened it.
So when I brought this wonderful wine home,
I left the room for a minute.
And when I came back,
there was my grandmother and my mother
pouring 7UP and a $200 bottle of wine into a pitcher,
(Laughter)
making, yes, a $200 wine spritzer.
(Laughter)
While this was horrifying,
it was actually another revelation.
You see, I'm an identical twin -
my twin's actually sitting right up here,
supporting me -
and she wasn't experiencing the same thing I was at that time.
And I thought to myself,
"Well, sure, we have different tastes in men,
but so does that mean everything dealing with the palate -
smell and taste -
that's all subjective?"
Uh ... yes and no.
Now, preference.
Preference is subjective.
Do I like it or not?
That's subjective.
But things with wine can be measured.
Alcohol, acid, density, extract.
There are a lot of things about wine that can be measured or objective.
The Master of Wine exam is a four-day exam -
just like the Bar exam!
I know, that's a terrible joke with the law firms.
(Laughter)
So it's a four-day exam,
and part of that exam
is identifying 36 wines blind.
They ask you the grape, how it was made, the price point, vintage, you name it -
all from tasting just what's in the glass.
They just give you the glass.
36 of them.
No pressure.
So I realized after I'd received the MW,
I was like, "Wow, I must be pretty hot stuff, right?"
Well, the reality is -
and I'd love to tell you I have superhuman abilities -
I don't.
Just like a marathon runner, I trained.
I trained, and I practiced, and I developed my palate.
It didn't happen overnight.
That's why my twin and I, we didn't perceive the same things.
We're genetically identical,
but we had a different experience because I developed my skills.
And the more I trained, the more powerful my palate became.
And I'm going to show you how to do this.
Okay, so we have three volunteers here.
Thank you very much, volunteers.
And we're going to start with the sense of smell.
Now, in front of each volunteer,
I've given you a little, little bottle of an aromatic essence.
I would like for you to pick that up right now,
shake it, open it,
and I want you - don't spill it -
I want you to - don't taste it either -
just smell it.
And I want you to write on your little dry erase boards -
tell me is it a fruit,
is it a flower or a perfume like flower,
or is it something else?
You don't have to tell me what it is;
you just have to tell me is it a fruit, is it a flower, or something else.
And while they do that,
there are about probably over 200 compounds in wines
that the human nose can detect.
Some say that there are actually millions of compounds
that the human nose can detect.
It's amazing, isn't it?
Now, okay, they've answered it.
Fantastic.
Volunteer number one, what was it?
A fruit! Yes.
I gave her a vial that contains strawberry.
Fantastic - I love it!
Wonderful - it works.
Okay, volunteer number two.
Fruit! Yes, indeed!
I gave her something that was raspberry.
So see? This is not that hard!
(Laughter)
And number three.
Something else.
Indeed, it was.
It was licorice that I gave you.
Yes!
So yep, it was something else.
And did you actually write licorice?
Oh, isn't she fabulous?
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Fantastic.
See, do you guys -
you're not Masters of Wine, right?
Volunteer: No.
Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan: See? See?
You're not even studying wine, are you?
No, I just grabbed them from the audience is really what happened.
"Do you like wine? Come up here."
So that's fantastic. I love it.
The next thing we're going to do is work with our palates.
And if you ever notice when you have a cold -
any of you who have ever had a cold -
you say, "I can't taste anything."
This is a fallacy, actually,
because there's nothing wrong with your taste buds.
Your taste buds can only perceive five things:
sweet, sour, salt, bitter, and umami.
And in the wine industry,
how we train our palates is through a component tasting.
In wine, out of the five things we can detect with our tongue,
we only have three in wine:
sweet, sour, and bitter.
Makes it easier, doesn't it?
So I've given -
we're doing a blind component tasting.
I've given them these gorgeous Ravenscroft black glasses.
These are right here.
You have two glasses in front of you, volunteers.
The one on the right is your control wine, which means nothing's been done to it.
And the one on your left with a little sticker on it,
I've done something to it, I've doctored it in a way.
I've added either acidity, bitterness, or sweetness,
which came in the form of tartaric acid for grapes,
wine tannin,
and good old-fashioned sugar.
So -
and as you get better with your sense of taste,
you reduce the amounts further along.
So what I want you to do is taste the first glass
and then taste the second glass.
You can compare and contrast side by side.
And while they do this -
oh, you're going to tell me on the board:
is it acid, bitterness, or sweetness -
from the second glass, not the first glass.
So while they do that -
I'm like excited looking over at what they're doing.
In terms of the component tasting,
we think sometimes things that are fruity is actually sweetness,
and sometimes we think something that's sweetness is actually fruity.
And what we hope is that they can be able to detect some of these.
And sometimes bitterness can be construed as acidity and back and forth.
So number one.
Bitter!
Okay, well, maybe not so much.
Your first was acid, okay, I have to be honest -
that's okay, that's okay -
which means I'm better than I thought.
I'm teasing you.
No, acid and bitterness can be confused with one another,
and actually we have more genes dedicated to bitterness
than any other trait.
So a lot of times we think something is bitter,
it's because our genes are really wired for that.
And actually, you might be a supertaster.
Yeah, you might be a supertaster
because supertasters are those that have more taste buds on their tongue
than the average person.
Okay. So, second?
Yes, it was bitterness, absolutely.
Thank you very much, thank you, thank you.
And the last one?
Sweet.
Fantastic, fantastic.
So now for the pièce de résistance, right?
You have in front of you a glass of red wine,
and I want you to pick it up.
Can you see your fingers through it if you tilt the glass?
Don't spill the wine, but can you see your fingers?
Okay, remember that: you can see your fingers.
All right.
After -
I'm going to ask you four questions,
and after these four questions - I want you to taste this twice -
but after these four questions,
you're going to be able to tell me where it's from.
So I'm testing these guys.
Think it's impossible? It's not.
It's a process in the industry we call "funneling,"
and it's kind of like a process of elimination.
So question number one -
let's taste it.
[Annual Mean Temperature]
That was a practice one; you can always taste it again.
(Laughter)
Calibrate your palate, you know.
We can say a lot of things about climate change
and do a lot of debating on climate,
but let's agree on one thing, right?
Let's agree that as you get closer to the equator, it gets warmer;
the further away you get from the equator, it gets cooler.
Can we agree on that?
Sure, right?
So in warm climates,
there's more sugar generated in the grapes,
which means more alcohol and less acidity.
In cool climates, where it's colder,
it's not as ripe.
So that means higher acidity, less sugar, less alcohol, lighter in body.
You can think of Marilyn Monroe for warm climate
and Audrey Hepburn for cool climate
or Keira Knightley and Kim Kardashian.
Take your pick.
So you tell me -
taste the wine -
is this a cool climate
or a warm climate?
Is it hot in alcohol,
or is it a little lighter in body?
Yeah, it's lighter in body. Excellent.
They're right - it's cooler climate.
So we now know one thing about it: it's from a cool climate.
Second question.
Is it Old World - meaning Europe -
or New World?
How do we know?
Those from the [New] World,
you only really get something that's fruit up front.
It really just tastes like one thing,
and it's fruit.
It's more overpowering than other flavors.
I know New World producers out there are going to -
I'm going to get hate mail for that.
But in terms of wines,
so the one you can tell by being from Europe, there's a restraint to it.
It's holding back just a little bit; it's not as obvious.
So you can taste other things in it.
So go ahead - taste the wine again.
Now, if you only get fruit, that's probably New World.
If you get other things,
like minerality and toastiness
and oh, there's things going on that you can't really identify,
likely it's from the Old World,
or if there's a restraint.
So is this Old World or New World?
Volunteer: Europe.
JSB: It's from Europe! Absolutely!
See how well they're doing!
It is indeed.
So now we have eliminated most of the world.
(Laughter)
Isn't that fabulous?
They're going to be Masters of Wine by the end of this.
All right. Now we're talking about quality, all right?
I have 12 parameters in my head when I taste wine,
and I go through it,
and I taste it and figure out if it's low or high quality.
I'm going to give you a couple of different ideas.
Simple wines are generally low quality - they don't have much going on.
High-quality wines have lots of different layers of things happening.
We already talked about different layers of things happening with this wine,
so chances are it's probably high quality, right?
And there's something called integration.
And if you think about a yogurt with fruit on the bottom -
see, if the fruit's still on the bottom, it's not integrated.
You can taste the fruit by itself with the yogurt.
But if you stir it up, you can't tell where one ends and the other begins.
That's another indication of quality.
And the last is length - how long the flavor is lasting.
Do you still kind of taste the flavor on it? Yeah.
So, all right.
So now we know after three questions,
this is from a cool climate in Europe, and it's high quality.
And if we're looking at that, we're really only looking at -
we're looking at, really, only Northern Europe.
Now, when I talked about the crayons in the beginning -
crayons blue and green?
Well, we have this in the wine industry: we call them noble grape varieties.
So these are red noble grape varieties that we start with, at least,
to try to identify wines.
And I put down different things about the color, the acid, and body.
And we said it was low in body
and it's high in acid,
and we looked -
I asked you to see if you could see your fingers through it, and you can.
So that really only means one grape variety:
Pinot Noir.
Huh.
And in Europe, in Northern Europe, we really only have France and Germany.
So if you can do this trick, you know, at parties,
you could impress people by saying,
"I know this is either from France or Germany."
Isn't that amazing after only having four questions?
And if we're looking at high-quality Pinot Noir,
we're really only looking at one area.
Not Southern France,
not Champagne,
but Burgundy.
And it is.
(Paper bag rustles)
It is the Jadot Pommard 2012.
So isn't that fantastic?
With four questions,
you were able to identify that this wine came from Burgundy.
You should be so proud of yourselves.
Now -
Hey, give them applause, please.
Thank you. See?
(Applause)
I started this with giving you one of my favorite quotes:
"If you change the way you look at things,
the things you look at change."
Now we know that this goes way beyond sight.
And for all of you Dorothies out there living in a world of black-and-white,
there's a wonderful world of color out there for you,
and it's right under your nose.
So I'm going to leave you with a toast:
May all of your joys be pure joys
and all of your pain be Champagne.
Thank you.
(Laughter)
(Applause)