I have a similar experience: my usual comment on tasting pretty much any alcoholic drink is ”...well, it definitely tastes like ethanol?” I kind of figured that was the point and most people who drink regularly have got adapted to the burning-aftertaste-sensation enough that they a) get to like it, and b) can taste other things in the same mouthful. I can also manage to slowly drink small amounts of quite sweet drinks, but not really anything else (and I don’t generally bother to do that; I’m just not interested, really). I also seem to be pretty hypersensitive to the alcohol: I get flushed with even a tiny amount and there’s a joke that I can get drunk off “fumes”. This has been fun on the odd occasion a few years ago but not something I would seek out.
However, it’s not quite the same as what you’re describing because I don’t have the general sensitivity to bitter flavours. I do like sweet things, but I also really like olives, to take your example, and plenty of other bitter foods. Not coffee though (although I do suspect I could acquire a taste for that if I wanted to try, whereas that seems very unlikely in the case of alcohol).
Sure. The joke is that it’s just the ambient fumes from other people’s drinks, not from purposefully inhaling vapours beyond maybe a brief sniff of someone’s beer. It is just a joke / exaggeration of oversensitivity.
I find I can act more freely around drunk people. Something like how you can pick up people’s accents and start using them by accident. and also “pretending to be drunk” allows for more social freedom. Although being drunk seems to slow down my brain and frustrate me more than help in social situations.
Interesting. So bitterness complaints is not necessarily the same as “tastes like alcohol”, many people of similar experience seem to have mentioned bitter-alcohol correlation.
I might tally up the responses and see if I can get some kind of results from these.
Someone here suggested 30 attempts to get used to alcohol, I think it might be closer to 50. which is one a month for 5 years, or one a week for a year. hardly seems worth the concentrated effort.
Depending on exactly how you define an attempt, I’m probably way, way below 50. So perhaps my assessment that I couldn’t acquire the taste is wrong and it would just take a lot more attempts than I would have thought.
My attempt was, every few weeks; “have a sip of X wine (usually from the glass of someone else having it)”, “decide if I like it”.
So far no progress in liking wine. I don’t feel like I am getting any closer though, and I don’t mind sacrificing a moment of “tasting something bad” towards the goal of trying wines, or trying to like them.
I would suggest being a bit more systematic about it. Sipping wine from a glass of someone in your circle actually locks you into a fairly narrow range of wines/flavors. Find examples of wines which go into particular directions (even as basic as sweet, sour, tannic, etc.), see if you like any particular direction. If you do, explore around it.
To exaggerate a bit, taking sips from beer cups at student parties will not tell you what actual beer tastes like and whether you like it or not :-)
Similarly with beers, finding out what beer someone is drinking, and what they think makes it different from other beers (and if its one I have tried before), then trying it, seems like a good way to try new beers, but so far I don’t really like any of the ones I have tried, (~20+)
I still try like this because I have never been sure if my taste preference will change, or if the different wines will taste better.
Mostly I find a few friends who drink wine to go around trying various wines, not sticking to the same ones, although I don’t exactly follow this very closely, I might start keeping a list of types of wine I have tried..
I have a similar experience: my usual comment on tasting pretty much any alcoholic drink is ”...well, it definitely tastes like ethanol?” I kind of figured that was the point and most people who drink regularly have got adapted to the burning-aftertaste-sensation enough that they a) get to like it, and b) can taste other things in the same mouthful. I can also manage to slowly drink small amounts of quite sweet drinks, but not really anything else (and I don’t generally bother to do that; I’m just not interested, really). I also seem to be pretty hypersensitive to the alcohol: I get flushed with even a tiny amount and there’s a joke that I can get drunk off “fumes”. This has been fun on the odd occasion a few years ago but not something I would seek out.
However, it’s not quite the same as what you’re describing because I don’t have the general sensitivity to bitter flavours. I do like sweet things, but I also really like olives, to take your example, and plenty of other bitter foods. Not coffee though (although I do suspect I could acquire a taste for that if I wanted to try, whereas that seems very unlikely in the case of alcohol).
Everybody can, in fact inhaling alcohol vapors is a very efficient way of getting very drunk very quickly.
Sure. The joke is that it’s just the ambient fumes from other people’s drinks, not from purposefully inhaling vapours beyond maybe a brief sniff of someone’s beer. It is just a joke / exaggeration of oversensitivity.
I find I can act more freely around drunk people. Something like how you can pick up people’s accents and start using them by accident. and also “pretending to be drunk” allows for more social freedom. Although being drunk seems to slow down my brain and frustrate me more than help in social situations.
Yeah, I agree—there’s almost definitely some of that going on.
Interesting. So bitterness complaints is not necessarily the same as “tastes like alcohol”, many people of similar experience seem to have mentioned bitter-alcohol correlation.
I might tally up the responses and see if I can get some kind of results from these.
Someone here suggested 30 attempts to get used to alcohol, I think it might be closer to 50. which is one a month for 5 years, or one a week for a year. hardly seems worth the concentrated effort.
Depending on exactly how you define an attempt, I’m probably way, way below 50. So perhaps my assessment that I couldn’t acquire the taste is wrong and it would just take a lot more attempts than I would have thought.
My attempt was, every few weeks; “have a sip of X wine (usually from the glass of someone else having it)”, “decide if I like it”.
So far no progress in liking wine. I don’t feel like I am getting any closer though, and I don’t mind sacrificing a moment of “tasting something bad” towards the goal of trying wines, or trying to like them.
I would suggest being a bit more systematic about it. Sipping wine from a glass of someone in your circle actually locks you into a fairly narrow range of wines/flavors. Find examples of wines which go into particular directions (even as basic as sweet, sour, tannic, etc.), see if you like any particular direction. If you do, explore around it.
To exaggerate a bit, taking sips from beer cups at student parties will not tell you what actual beer tastes like and whether you like it or not :-)
Similarly with beers, finding out what beer someone is drinking, and what they think makes it different from other beers (and if its one I have tried before), then trying it, seems like a good way to try new beers, but so far I don’t really like any of the ones I have tried, (~20+)
I still try like this because I have never been sure if my taste preference will change, or if the different wines will taste better.
Mostly I find a few friends who drink wine to go around trying various wines, not sticking to the same ones, although I don’t exactly follow this very closely, I might start keeping a list of types of wine I have tried..