“Training Your Palate” a.k.a. “Make Conan O’Brien Eat Crap”
Absurd, and annoying, and sad August 3rd, 2007 First, a caveat to this, I think that Gary Vaynerchuk does absolutely fine work on his site tv.winelibrary.com, a wine video blog (vlog) which attempts to demystify wine and make it more accessible in a down-to-earth and direct way than the way many wine aesthetes approach it.33
That out-of-the-way however, this is the sort of attention-grabbing, publicity-stuntish, and misguided attempt at “education” that drives me batshit loco. It’s like that doofus Will Cramer who yells at you and through his exuberance hides the fact that he’s giving you information that any broker on Wall Street had at least 24 hours before and whose value is now diminshed to the point of being moot; except in this case it’s trying to get you to do shit my 5-year-old will tell you is retarded. I understand what he’s trying to do; yes, different varietals have basic flavor profiles that are shared across vintages, terroirs, etc. and you can train your palate to identify those core characteristics and better evaluate wines from those baseline flavors. But, and let me make this clear, *ahem* you shouldn’t have to eat bacteria-ridden dirt, eat rank-ass tobacco, lick rocks, et al to understand the tones and flavor profiles of wine. When 80-90% of our sense of taste (only bitter, sweet, salt, and sour aside – and umami if you want to get real damned technical) is derived from the sense of smell, this is completely useless and counterintuitive and is more likely to turn people off from exploring wine than turn them on. That is, Conan’s reaction is just about on-target with how the majority of people would react in this situation, ‘You’re an idiot…’
This defeats Vaynerchuk’s core mission which is noble and well-handled through his vlog. All that aside, I bet his traffic spiked a good amount after this sort of visibility, and more power to him on that score. I just hope people get past this foolhardiness and stay for the well-reasoned and informative look at wine his vlog provides. Slate online magazine also has a great profile of Vaynerchuk here; definitely worth a read.
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- If you’re viewing this through Google Reader or another aggregator without accessing the site, the video here may not appear until you open this post333
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To be fair, Gary seemed super nervous and not his usual self. I agree with you about the smell thing; the first time I saw his palate-training episode on Wine Library TV (the origin of the rock-licking, dirt-eating and sock-sucking), I became unsure if he was actually the proletariat wine savior that he wants to be…or just a complete lunatic with a big wine store. I do like the concept of having a tasting party though—it’s rare that you’d just sit down and eat, say, a spoonful of black raspberry preserves, just to get that flavor into your repertoire.
And, in Gary’s defense, the dude kills at a blind tasting.
I certainly understand the concept; I just disagree with the approach and think it’s misguided. The dude knows his stuff; there’s absolutely no doubt about that, and I think he brings a great approach to making people comfortable with wine, but this struck me as the wrong way to meet that goal.
I would rather see a guided approach to trying 3-4 different wines of the same varietal and then identifying the common characteristics of each along with those root flavors (e.g. your raspberry preserve idea) and/or a sort of scratch-and-sniff version of what he does since the nose has so much to do with it.
And, also in his defense, his 90 pt. wines under $15 (episode #286) is spot-on; the ‘Marques de Casa Concha’ Concha y Toro and Domaine Carneros products are almost all top-notch.
This is the second time in two days Domaine Carneros has come up in conversation. Odd.
I agree with you about the over-the-top approach. He certainly wins more people over with his Jets spit bucket than he does with weird adventures in tobacco-tasting. (Coincidentally, a flavor profile I can’t abide. Ugh.)
Eh. Gary’s a personality and I think this is a great example of why style over substance is a horrible approach. Conan’s reaction was spot-on.
I don’t care if he can tell a wine from 100 paces. If his goal is to demystify wine and wine tasting through licking rocks and eating dirt he out of his mind. I don’t know anyone since my college days who would do any of that.
Word.
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