Learning about tasting foods is important to know before we get into cooking and more importantly, learning how to taste wine. So, me and my friend Paint had a bit of fun this afternoon and made a little picture of a tongue to help understand taste buds. Yup, it's a tongue...
Back of tongue
FrontOkay so, there are four main regions of the tongue which the tastebuds react differently to all types of foods. The middle part of the tongue is more of a neutral/ savoury sort of area. Without getting into the chemistry of things, these regions are where you will 'sense' all the different aspects of tasting.
Bitter: At the back of the tongue, foods like a coffee, unsweetened cocoa powder and grapefruit.
Sour: On both sides of the tongue which detects acidity of the food being consumed for example lemons, citric acid and off-milk. The higher the acidity, the more sour it will taste.
Sweet: At the tip of the tongue, foods like lollies, fruit, desserts etc
Salty: Also at the tip, so foods with high amounts of sodium.
With learning about the tongue, it is also important to think about what you are eating (Very important for wine tasting). For example: At school we were given a platter of different foods to taste so we could decide which category they fell into on the tongue and what they tasted like, one of them was jelly beans. Students were saying they smelt like sugar because they are sweet. But what does sugar smell like? If you smelt a bag of sugar would it smell similar to jelly beans? No. So its a tough one. Just like a white wine, it doesn't just smell like 'wine' there are many scents and tastes such as green capsicum, stone fruits, oak and the list goes on and on. More about that later, but the point of this post was to just to start learning about what you are actually eating and what the true smells are, what you are tasting and the where it hits on the tongue.
