Bottom Line/Personal: This is a question we got, and it sounds like peer pressure, but I’ll ask it anyway. Is there a wine for people who don’t like wine? I don’t know why somebody would want to force their friends to have wine.

Amy Dixon: Yes, it’s called beer. It’s called beer.

Bottom Line: If it’s like beginner wine. Is there like junior wine…and then you step up?

Dixon: Yeah, well, there are junior wines. I mean, certainly the white Zinfandels of the world, as much as a wine initiate can go, “Oh, pshaw,” they have a place.

I find that people’s palates throughout their lifetime throw a bell curve, meaning that they start off liking sweet and craving sweet. As teenagers, we like sugary sodas…we like candy…we like all these things. And as our palate develops and we’ve tasted more and more wine, you start going toward the dry end of the spectrum.

And then as we get old, not for nothing, our palates get a little bit deadened over time. You’re losing the sensitivity of your taste buds that you had in your 30s and 40s, and as you start to get near your 60s and 70s, everything starts to slow down a bit, including your palate. So you tend to not be able to taste the nuances as much as you did when you were younger. So then you tend to gravitate back toward sweet. So you go sweet to dry to sweet. That’s what I generally see.

Bottom Line: Fascinating.

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