Acquired Tastes

So, I have done an awful lot of drinking this weekend.

Not necessarily the best sentence to start a post with, but here we are anyway.

It wasn’t drinking to get drunk.  Friday, my husband and I went to a festival at the local botanic gardens to sample beer while we wandered around the flowers.  Yesterday we attended the first ever Colorado Winefest to celebrate (and try) Colorado wineries.  Ideally they would not have been the same weekend, but it is too late for that now.

It got me to thinking.  Beer and wine, like many things in life, are acquired tastes.  Very few people I know liked either initially.  Coffee, too, is something you must make yourself like.  You start off with something easy – fruity, low alcohol wines, then you move on to the White Zinfandels and then finally onto the whites, and eventually you graduate to the full-bodied reds.  But you have to work at it.  It is near impossible to decide one day to be a wine snob and go forth and do it immediately.

I’m not a beer person.  I do not like it, and it’s only since visiting Germany last year (where drinking beer is a near necessity) that I can drink it in social settings at all.  So, why do we do this?  Why, if your first instinct when you try something is that you despise it, do we push on?

Got me. 

Ha, you expected answers.  You are barking up the wrong tree.

Things like beer and wine and alcohol have a variety of reasons people acquire tastes for them.  Something social, or something that makes them feel more worldly, or just so they can dangle their wine snobitty over others to make themselves feel good.  Coffee keeps one awake and provides noveling fuel.

But can one acquire tastes for things that are not edible?  I know my husband loves sailing.  I do not love sailing, it makes me anxious and my entire focus the entire time is making sure I do not end up in the water.  He also loves rock climbing.  I am afraid of heights.  I continue to do these activities because I want to make my husband happy, but I do not seem to be acquiring anything other than a nervous tic.

And in the end, even some edible things are elusive.  I’m 28 years old and I will still not eat cinnamon.  It is a horrible, disgusting spice and I hate it with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.   I also cannot eat ice cream on anything warm.

So what have we learned here today?  Everything’s worth trying once.  Some things are worth sticking with, and hey, maybe in the end, you’ll actually like them.  So get out and have a good time.