Happy Hours

Believe it or not, there is such a thing as palate fatigue, a condition whereby the taste buds peter out. But you'd never know it by listening to expert wine tasters. Because while their mouths say "cassis with the crisp horizontal aspects of weed ambling symmetrically into exuberant and lively...

By Mark Stuertz

March 22, 2001

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Believe it or not, there is such a thing as palate fatigue, a condition whereby the taste buds peter out. But you'd never know it by listening to expert wine tasters. Because while their mouths say "cassis with the crisp horizontal aspects of weed ambling symmetrically into exuberant and lively mouth feel folding generously into hints of bark, sap, leather, licorice, and smokiness with traces of German Shepherd pelt, wet earth, and ripe mango on the finish," their taste buds say, "Who the hell washed the glasses with lemon-freshened borax?"

Palate fatigue just might come to mind during this year's The Dallas Morning News Wine and Food Festival. Because during the festival, you can sample each of the medal-winning wines as judged by 48 internationally renowned wine critics, who collectively sniffed, slurped, and spit some 2,500 wines in 150 categories, all without staining the carpet with their lips. But tasting and sniffing expensive grape juice is not all this festival flaunts. There are also barrels of educational seminars including shop talk on Mediterranean oils, chocolate, pairing wine with American cheese, pairing wine and grilled foods, pinot noir blending, morel mushrooms, moles, genetically modified foods, a tour of the Vintage Room wine cellar at Voltaire, and more wine dinners than you can count on one hand with blurred vision. Plus Dallas' hottest young chefs will strut their pabulum at The Rising Stars Chefs Awards dinner with Bill Boggs, host of TV Food Network's Bill Boggs' Corner Table, while the top festival award winners will be announced during a bedazzling multimedia awards ceremony and dinner featuring the recipient of this year's Publishers Award: Gloria Ferrer Champagne Caves in Sonoma, California. Skoal.

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