Being a foodie is an acquired taste

(written by Lawrence Krubner, however indented passages are often quotes)

This is funny, but I do not think it is fair:

One thing I learned on my trip to the Bordeaux wine-making region of France is that the vast, vast, vast majority of things said about wine are complete bullshit. The upper end of the wine industry is almost entirely about marketing and branding, and has very little to do with the product. In a blind taste test, I bet that 97% of wine drinking adults can tell the difference between a 1€ bottle of wine and a 15€ bottle of wine. But once you get up to a 15€ bottle of wine (the threshold price might actually be closer to 7€), I bet less than 1% of wine drinking adults can tell the difference between that 15€ bottle and a 50€ or 100€ or 1000€ bottle of wine. There’s just not that much difference!

The Power of Suggestion

The most significant factor in how much you will enjoy a glass of wine is how good you are told it is before you drink it. During our wine tour in Saint Émilion, we were given several wines to try. On some, tour guide told us, “This wine is not yet ready. It will be ready to drink in five years. But if you wanted to really drink it now, you would have to decant it for an hour before drinking.” We took a sip. “See how it’s too aggressive up front? And then the taste disappears so quickly?” the guide continued. And sure enough, we all totally agreed. Then, he gave us a similar wine from ten years ago that “was ready for drinking now.” He added, “See how the bouquet is evenly balanced and the aggressiveness comes at the end, lingers, and then fades very slowly.” What do you know? That’s exactly what I experienced! The ten year old glass of Saint Émilion wine I had during the tasting was some of the best wine I’ve ever drunk. But it’s not worth 50€ for a bottle.

In most fields of human experience, untrained humans can understand maybe 95% of whatever they are suppose to get out of some experience. That remaining 5% is for experts to argue about. The law of diminishing returns sets in – but that is what an expert is, someone who has chased diminishing returns way down the curve.

Take, for instance, computer programming. Is the front-controller pattern the best pattern for web software, or is light-weight inclusion in a variety of points of control better? Should we have a debate? The debate would be interesting to experts, but not so much to novices. Suppose some kid spends 6 weeks learning PHP and MySQL. Now they can create a content management system, just like me. Will their CMS be as good as my CMS? Hopefully, no. But their simple CMS will no doubt be able to deliver the basics, and everything else takes us into the territory of diminishing returns.

I have a friend who spent 6 years studying music at college. He says it ruined his appreciation for music. Before he went, he could not discern 32nd notes. After he went, he could discern 32nd notes so well that he found it jarring whenever a musician missed the beat, which is common.

I think the world of food and wine is the same. Except for those of us suffering an illness, we can all enjoy a good meal. Most of us can enjoy a glass of good wine. Would you enjoy it more if you spent years learning all the subtleties of wine? Well, if you taste enough wine, that might ruin it for you. Your taste buds would learn to discriminate subtleties that they now miss. You would be more discriminating. You could tell the difference between a wine that was 99.90% perfect and one that was 99.99% perfect. This might ruin, for you, the wine that is only 99.90%, which the rest of us would enjoy. That is the price of being a foodie.