'Resetting' the Palette?

[suiken]

I'm watching Gary review the wines and everything, and I find it entertaining, but I'm wondering, is the wine he's tasting/reviewing affected by the previous wine at all? I mean, I know that there's only a tiny bit of it left when he dumps it in the spit bucket and pours the next one in, but I wonder if it makes any difference (I'm not a food critic or reviewer or anything, so I wouldn't know).

For example, as far as I understand it, when you go to eat sushi (I'm not a fan of sushi myself), you eat a piece of the pickled ginger in between each dish in order to cleanse the palette so the previous dish doesn't affect the next dish.

As far as I'm seeing/hearing (I do other stuff while "watching" so the video's not always up), he doesn't eat anything that does that, and he's not using a new glass with every wine.

[controversy187]

I can't speak for eating/drinking something between tastings, but after Gary tastes one wine, he rinses out his glass with a small portion of the next wine before pouring the sample that he tastes. I would imagine there's still a a really small amount of the first wine, but I doubt that anyone would be able to taste it. He actually mentions something to this extent in a recent episode where two wines smelled almost identical and he did an extra rinse to make sure that the first one was completely removed.

Hope that helps a little!

[tokenuser]

A lot of the palette has nothing to do with taste buds but more a sense of smell. The best way to cleanse the nasal palette is sniffing coffee beans. Thats 75% of the palette cleanse.

Oyster crackers and rinsing mouth with water take you to 90%.

For the other 10% you are pretty much out of luck, and just need to wait.

BUT, another key is the order the wines are tasted - it minimises the effect of that 10%.

[tuxotaku]

this is an awesome question, and something I've been wondering about myself. Something tells me these forums are going to be a great asset to those of us just getting into wine.