Comments on: Go figure: Budometer is a wine taste test

By: wine

wine — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:02:56 +0000

Wow! it`s a nice article about wine.Tasting wine a really great thing.

By: Stan Hieronymus

Stan Hieronymus — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:14:07 +0000

I’m a bitter and bland guy.

We’re all rooting for recovery.

As to the role culture plays and how our perceptions adapt, I could rattle on quite a while just about green chile and hops.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:59:29 +0000

Nice, Stan, thanks. My wife has always claimed to be a supertaster, which is why she thinks she doesn’t like beer and coffee as “insanely” bitter as I do. I have noticed that she does a better job of identifying distinct hop flavors, and she’s a genius about identifying spice.

I wonder how much culture plays into this (or if indeed biology creates culture). I once came up with a theory that foods tend to run on a sweet and spicy or bitter and bland axis. I’m a bitter and bland guy.

By: SteveH

SteveH — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:11:06 +0000

“Steve, remember this is the wine quiz and you aren’t the target.”

Maybe, but isn’t it all about education? I do my best to learn about the different wine styles I’m interested in — don’t lump Pinot Noir and Merlot into an odd bucket just ’cause they’re red.

Oh, and I add cream to my coffee too — seems most of the world besides the US does too. Oh well.

By: Saul M

Saul M — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 04:18:10 +0000

The other interesting thing I found out after playing with the site (the WSJ one) is that your tolerance level changes simply from your expressed interest in wine, even if all of your other answers are the same (also, gender ‘drops’ tolerance a good bit…)

By: Stan Hieronymus

Stan Hieronymus — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:32:48 +0000

Spencer – Nice link, I hadn’t seen that.

I also got rated as a “supertaster.” (I figure I didn’t get as high a number on the Budometer because I don’t drink coffee. Should have asked about coffee beers.)

But back to “super taster.” I first thought that was related to this story, which points out that super tasters have more taste buds and don’t much like bitter. Nothing super about that as far as I am concerned.

By: Stan Hieronymus

Stan Hieronymus — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:21:49 +0000

Adding a little bit of cream or sugar to your coffee changes you from a 9 to a 5.5?

Hey, they are wine drinkers.

Sorry, couldn’t resist. Let’s hold down bashing the wine guys. I’m not sure I qualify as one, but we do have a fair chunk of wine in our pseudo cellar.

By: Swordboarder

Swordboarder — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:44:03 +0000

Adding a little bit of cream or sugar to your coffee changes you from a 9 to a 5.5?

I declare shenanigans.

By: Spencer

Spencer — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 22:19:37 +0000

I got a 9 out of 9 on the WSJ test, “Tolerant taster” from budometer.

There’s also the “supertaster” quiz at BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/interactives/supertaster/

I don’t know how the two are supposed to correlate, but it tells me I’m a “supertaster.”

By: Stan Hieronymus

Stan Hieronymus — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:37:27 +0000

Steve, remember this is the wine quiz and you aren’t the target.

Let’s wait to see the beer version – not that you’ll be the target there either.