How do I get my taste buds like that of a wine Connoisseur?!
Answers:
Practice..Practice..Practice!
Personal experience. I now have a palette of a wine god!
Drink a lot of different wine.
Go to wine tastings, especially if there are pairings. It changes the taste.
Look for specific, established flavors in common varieties and learn to find them. For example, Merlots typically have blackberry flavors. Once you know what you're tasting (it's not exactly like blackberries but it certainly strongly reminds you of that flavor) you'll probably notice it in other reds like Cab Sav or Malbec. You can also find flavors on your own.
And yes, there's a lot of fluff and snobbery out there. That doesn't make the tastings wrong, wines absolutely have a body or a texture or a mouthfeel.
Read everything about wine you can get your hands on.
Smell everything you come in contact with.
Taste each bite of food you eat and try to pick out different ingredients in it.
Taste as much wine as possible and take thorough notes. Try to differentiate between fruit smells and nonfruit smells (cherry vs. leather, for example).
It takes years to develop a good palate and many people never do, especially if they're smokers or have bad allergies.
EDIT: Pamela obviously knows nothing about wine. Some wines very obviously have a "heavy body", although a "fluid texture" sounds ridiculous and is a descriptor that is not used in the wine world. Adnd those smells and tastes certainly ARE there. Just because you can't smell/taste them doesn't mean they don't exist. It simply means you have a bad palate.
I'm a sommelier.
Become snotty and capable of imagining smells and tastes that aren't there. Also it is key to use really snotty statements, instead of using plain english because you and everyone else knows your full of sh** like: "it has a heavy body" "oh this has great fluid texture" Wine is great on its own but having to hang around these people is unbearable and yes everyone IS laughing at them.
