What California Wine Do You Like? There’s A Test For Finding Your Wine Palate: Sweet, Sensitive, or Tolerant?
You like California wine, but some of it is just too harsh, some to sweet. With over 10,000 varieties of wine grape which one fits your palate, your taste?
There are really four of personas, four spaces in the sensory sensitivity spectrum. They are Sweet, Hypersensitive, Sensitive and Tolerant. If you have a Sweet palate, you’re going to like Muscat or Prosecco. If you have a Tolerant palate you’re looking for big bold Cabernet Sauvignon.
Our Quick Guide to Discovering Your Palete:
Drink Coffee Black: Cabernet Sauvignon (ie: Tolerant)
Drink Coffee Light Cream/Sugar: Zinfandel, Syrah, (ie: Sensitive)
Drink Coffee Heavy Cream/Sugar: Pinot Noir, Viognier, Rose (ie: Sensitive)
Drink Tea Straight: Chardonnay, Viognier, Rose (ie: Hypersensitive)
Drink Tea Cream/Sugar: Saviugnon Blanc, Picapoul (ie: Hypersensitive)
The same is true for salty snacks vs. un-salted snacks. If you like salty, you’re on the Toleranat/Sensitive side of the spectrum and you’ll enjoy red wine Cabernet, Petit Sirah & Malbec. If you don’t like salt, you’re on the Sensitive/Hypersensitive side and you’ll probably enjoy Chenin Blanc, Moscato & Riesling.
MyVinoType.com helped define these categories several years back but the site is currently unsupported. Our readers are reporting frequent 404 Error pages after filling out the form. You may want to take its palate test but don’t be surprised if it fails. The gist of the test is shown above.
Through a series of questions about whether or not you drink tea or coffee, with sugar or cream, enjoy salted snacks and other sensory sensations that help guide you to your favorite wines. We tried this years ago as a prelude to participating in the Lodi Consumer Wine Awards. The site’s results guide the program hosts to help you sample and judge wines you enjoy (because you certainly don’t want to taste wine you do not like.)
Alas this program fell apart. We’re sad about it’s demise. There were 80 or so consumers in two shifts tasting wine from around the country (primarily California) and judging them on a scale of 1 to 7. We both sampled 33 wines on the morning shift (spitting every taste) learning a lot about our likes, dislikes, other varietals and the broad spectrum of winemakers, terriors and styles.
Who knew serious drinking could be such fun, educational.
If you choose to take the test you will need to enter your email, first name and age to receive test results. Or, just view the results on the final page. At this point we can’t vouch for whether or not they sell off the information or keep it to themselves.
Consider whether or not there are parallels between your salt/coffee consumption and the correlation to your wine preferences.
Some notes on our wine ranking system.
Bill & Erin Hodge write about California Wine, the estates & winemakers producing them and educational information about Vino. Living in California Wine Country provides a front row seat to the places you want to visit the most here in the Golden State.
– -✰ means -What’s next on your list of wines
-✰ means -Not liking it too much
✰ means -We’ll drink this wine, especially if it’s hosted!
✰+ means -You’ve got our attention and we might buy this wine.
✰+ + means -We’re hooked and we’re going to buy this wine.
When you see -✰/✰+ with a slash, it means we disagree.
