07 Oct Please The Palate Pick of the Week: VinoTastr, Discover Your Wine Preference

Learning about wine can be overwhelming. There are so many varieties and so many styles of wine. You might buy a wine based on the price or the label, but when you get home what if you do not like it? How do you know where to start if you are new to wine? Perhaps you have found one wine you like but you do not know why you like it or where to go from there. We all have different palates and now you can find out the science behind your sip and discover your wine preference with VinoTastr, the Please The Palate pick of the week.

VinoTastr calls itself the world’s first wine taste technology company. It was developed by research done by Dr. Henry Barham, a board-certified ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist who works as a dedicated rhinologist. He has a lab where he focuses on taste and smells. He has studied upper airway immunity and the inflammatory cascade influenced by taste receptor cells within the oral cavity. His research on taste receptors first found that people with higher perception of bitter had milder outcomes, if any, to Covid. Using this same research, he and his team have turned it to taste.

By isolating and testing specific receptors most identified in wine perception, Dr. Barham and the VinoTastr team can pair the results with different varieties of wine. That makes VinoTastr a great tool for beginners. It is not only helpful but fun. An initial measurement can help you understand what you might like right out of the gate. You can take a quick taste test and within minutes, the VinoTastr app will identify one of five unique VinoTastr profiles — Sweet Avenger, Savory Crusader, Body Advocate, Balance Ambassador, and Tannin Champion.

Using VinoTastr is just a starting point. It is an interactive test that uses taste strips that measure your individual taste sensitivities to bitterness, sweetness, flavor, and body, and aligns it with wine preferences and wine traits such as residual sugars, tannins, and alcohol level. These are our innate receptors, what we are born with. Of course, the more wines you taste, you can, and will, develop your palate. But, at the foundation, we all have different palates. We have different preferences and different sensitivities. So, if we can have a basic understanding of our own taste receptors, we can find wines that we like because we actually like them, not because someone tells us we should. There is no right or wrong or good or bad answer. Our taste receptors are what we are born with.

A VinoTastr kit comes with 2 VinoTastr tests. Each test includes 4 strip pouches. The first step is to scan your discovery kit ID to register.

Once registered, you open one pouch at a time. Put the strip on your tongue until it is completely moistened. Then concentrate on what you taste and the intensity of that taste. Select the taste you perceive on the app and then indicate the level of intensity.

Repeat the step with the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th strips.

Once you have completed the four steps, you click finish and will get your results. You will be a Sweet Avenger, Savory Crusader, Body Advocate, Balance Ambassador, or Tannin Champion. Again, there is no right or wrong answer. But whatever you get, you will be given descriptions of what you might like, as well as a handful of grape varieties that will fit your palate. This is a great place to get started exploring the world of wine.

For me, I am a “Body Advocate.” And, I think it it pretty spot on as I do tend to prefer cool climate red wines with texture, balance, and spicy flavors. And, I am a fan of the grape varieties suggested to me. But, as I said above, we can develop our palates. Reading some of the other descriptors for the other categories, such as Savory Crusader and Balance Ambassador, I found that I am also a fan of many other wines. But, I have been tasting and studying wine for more than two decades and have developed a palate to understand and appreciate different styles of wine.

But, if you are just starting out as a wine drinker, try VinoTastr. Click Here, sign up and then place your order. Find out if you a Sweet Avenger, Savory Crusader, Body Advocate, Balance Ambassador, or Tannin Champion. Then start trying different wines. This is a great tool to help demystify wine. Order your tests today! Get 2 tests for $24.