I drink moderately, largely as a social lubricant. My preference leans toward dark beer, heavier red wines and some unoaked whites, gin, scotch, and the dryer end of the spectrum of dessert wines and cocktails, and I find all of the above quite tasty—though I didn’t always. Like a lot of people, I started out drinking in college, for effect and to signal maturity, and an appreciation for the flavors of alcoholic drinks only came after a fair amount of experience with them. Hard to say how much of that’s acquiring taste and how much is the fact that you can’t afford good booze on a college student’s budget, but I expect both are involved.
Food-wise, I like hot, spicy and heavily umami flavors. I’m not sensitive to the bitter notes in coffee or brassica vegetables, though I do add a little sugar to the oversteeped coffee common to Starbucks and its imitators, and I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. Wouldn’t surprise me if this was linked to my taste in alcohol.
You may be a supertaster—it’d fit your reported experience with food. The etiology isn’t fully understood, but it’s probably linked to the PAV/PAV variant of TAS2R38, which 23andMe maps. That doesn’t seem to be the whole story, though; I’m PAV/PAV myself but I don’t have the supertaster phenotype.
I drink moderately, largely as a social lubricant. My preference leans toward dark beer, heavier red wines and some unoaked whites, gin, scotch, and the dryer end of the spectrum of dessert wines and cocktails, and I find all of the above quite tasty—though I didn’t always. Like a lot of people, I started out drinking in college, for effect and to signal maturity, and an appreciation for the flavors of alcoholic drinks only came after a fair amount of experience with them. Hard to say how much of that’s acquiring taste and how much is the fact that you can’t afford good booze on a college student’s budget, but I expect both are involved.
Food-wise, I like hot, spicy and heavily umami flavors. I’m not sensitive to the bitter notes in coffee or brassica vegetables, though I do add a little sugar to the oversteeped coffee common to Starbucks and its imitators, and I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. Wouldn’t surprise me if this was linked to my taste in alcohol.
You may be a supertaster—it’d fit your reported experience with food. The etiology isn’t fully understood, but it’s probably linked to the PAV/PAV variant of TAS2R38, which 23andMe maps. That doesn’t seem to be the whole story, though; I’m PAV/PAV myself but I don’t have the supertaster phenotype.
edit in main post. Yes I am a supertaster but didn’t want to confuse people with the jargon. Thanks!