Taste.
Oh, fucking taste.
Taste when you pick the bottle by the label. Taste when you go by every code that’s already been validated. Taste when you know which restaurant to book, which lamp to buy, which typeface to use, which artist to cite, which colour to put on the wall.
All correct.
All recognisable.
All so well curated.
Oh, so curated.
If all you’ve got are validated codes, you might have a taste that’s perfectly indexed. But we already have the Pinterest algorithm for that.
If you know how to train it.
Oh, education.
So, Lines: how do you train taste?
Well, look — you don’t train it. You corrupt it. You take it out of the house. You put something in front of it that it never asked for.
The tacky. The excessive. The quiet. The minimal.
Something that scratches a little. Something that doesn’t fit at all.
Something you still don’t quite know where to put.
And then we see what you do with it.
Sometimes it beats you. It’s not for you.
Fine.
Perfect.
But if you only go by what’s easy, I don’t think you can train your palate.
Oh, palate.
Training the palate takes that rough moment. That one. You know the one.
Like when you try your first beer.
Or your first gin and tonic.
Good?
Well…
Sometimes you don’t like it because it’s crap. But other times you don’t like it because you haven’t yet given it the chance to be liked. Or, at least, to be understood.
Taste seeks pleasure.
“Oh, what good taste,” said no one when what sat in front of them wasn’t aligned with their own taste.
And yet a trained palate first tolerates not understanding.
And yes, here I could talk to you about outsourcing taste to a thing that has no palate. Hello, AI!
But that would be too easy.
Besides, that same thing has probably already handed you back the word friction.
Oh, friction.
Blessed word. How I loved you. I think of you every three sentences.
Because friction is what you feel when what you taste isn’t what you expected and yet…
You taste. You compare. You come back.
You come back because you liked it, or because someone taught you to tilt the wine a different way so it opens, so that as it passes it sits differently. Or someone teaches you the mezcal ritual: inhale, drink, exhale.
And then you come back, but you come back changed.
That happens with a brand too.
Oh, branding.
At first you see it and you like it. You’re heart-eyes over it.
Then you start to contrast it with what you see, with what you learned from that first gin and tonic and with what you were told.
You start to tell things apart. What belongs to that brand and what belongs to the category. What’s a decision and what’s a trend. What looks premium because it costs money to produce and what has value even when it’s made with four elements. What word holds a position and what’s there because someone saw something similar in another deck.
You start to have references and references — and I mean the good kind.
Because a good reference is one that widens what you’re able to see. The thing that makes you reduce everything to a comparison with it isn’t a reference, it’s a customs officer.
An expensive wine that says nothing to you. One you don’t buy for the label, that surprises you. A small brand that understands exactly who it is. A brand with a budget Barça could close its star signing with and that, even so, still needs someone to explain why it should matter to you.
Something that wasn’t on your radar and, after you’ve tried it, is already one of your essentials.
And who am I. No one. Or someone. An ordinary person.
I have exquisite taste. Or questionable.
Depending on who you ask.
But my palate is trained.
And I train it every day. Not on good wine. Nor natural oysters. Nor the good cured ham.
I’m talking about being willing to step out of my comfort zone. Out of my learned codes. Out of all the stuff the feed shoves into my eyes until one day it looks like I chose it myself.
Tacky.
Maximalist.
Excessive.
Yes.
I like it.
Or neutral.
Or minimal.
That too.
You can widen the palate without losing judgement. In fact, for me that’s exactly the point.
If you know me, you know.
If you don’t, you can reach out whenever you like.
I don’t bite.
Or I do.
But I’m vaccinated.
And yes.
I’m with you.
People who choose wine by the price deserve their own piece.
Lines Aja
Brand Strategist & Verbal Identity Consultant — Las Musas
cultooruido.com