Word: taster
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...await his thrice-yearly tasting visits with the same trepidation that restaurateurs have for the annual Le Guide Michelin ratings. Craig Goldwyn, editor of the rival International Wine Review, says Parker has "one of the greatest palates ever to walk the earth," although some writers complain that as a taster he favors strength over subtlety. (Parker, of course, denies it.) His critics also carp that his success is based primarily on a 50-to-100-point rating system for wines that is fast becoming a popular industry standard. Wine merchants across the country know that advertising a vintage with...
Carefully bending a taster spoon between my teeth, I snap and catapult it at Nancy. It smacks into the back of her neck and she jerks forward into the spray hose hanging next to the smoosh board. Its handle depresses, drenching her leg with water. "Hose-shot, hose-shot!" I chant, dancing triumphantly out of her reach. The waist high smoosh-hose is a chronic problem for scoopers, whose rushes to the board often leave them looking incontinent. Nancy sends a confetti cloud of powdered Reeses at my head...
...warm, sweet-smelling atmosphere of ice cream and music behind the counter always floats me into a completely primal mode of being. I drift and bop in a peacefully chaotic world, popping taster spoons until my stomach bloats, bullshitting with my fellow scoopers, or flying into smart-ass raps with the customers...
...reliable for nonprofessionals. No need to have worried. Dr. Bartoshuk found that I matched the norm on intensity ratings. However, my sensitivity to tastes at very low concentrations was well above normal. That is due partly to naturally low thresholds but also to my experience as a taster...
...turned out to be a strong taster of the bitter stimuli phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) and propylthiouracil (PROP). The ability or inability to taste these stimuli is genetic. To taste very weak concentrations, as I did, indicates that the subject is probably homozygous, or has two dominant genes for bitter tasting. People who perceive PTC/PROP mildly are likely to be heterozygous, meaning that they have one dominant and one recessive gene. Non-tasters of these bitter stimuli have two recessive genes. It was interesting to notice how the tastes literally "felt" as they were being washed over the tongue. Salt and sweet...