On Acquiring Tastes

Olive Boot Camp

During the months preceding my 2008 trip to Greece, I had one major apprehension about travelling. It had nothing to do with passports or language or money: it was about food. I was going to spend five weeks in southern Greece, and I despised olives.

This was a problem.

I would not be able to appreciate a fruit that has been central to the country's history, culture, and cuisine for thousands of years. It would be like going to Athens without visiting the Parthenon.

So, being of a logical bent, I decided to systematically train myself to enjoy olives. I would eat one olive every day, until I left for Greece, and thereby force myself to acquire a taste for the briny fruit. This is essentially the way that I acquired most "adult" tastes. When I was younger I had a revulsion for coffee, tea, wine, beer, and blue cheese, but through gradual exposure I came to love them all. This was to be a controlled and intensified version of that natural acclimatization.

I bought two jars of olives: one green and one kalamata. The first week was rough. Each olive brought a grimace, a wince, occasionally a gag. The second week was smoother, but not enjoyable. I started to worry that the experiment wasn't going to work, so I intensified the process further and started eating a few olives every night before I went to bed.

At this rate I exhausted my two jars quickly. This is when I came upon Olive Me, a specialty shop on 109th Street that sells house-marinated olives. I didn't realize that there was such a difference between grocery store canned olives (rubbery, one-note wonders) and these "fresh" olives (better texture, a fuller, fruitier taste). I put "fresh" in quotation marks because all olives are hydrated in water, then a brine, before being eaten. The fruits at Olive Me are only fresh in that they haven't been canned.

In time the experiment was a success. I was able to enjoy the small bowl of olives that preceded most Greek meals, and even the olive paste that filled some pastries.


Scotch

One taste that I never developed naturally, despite several sporadic attempts, was that for scotch. I have a few friends who wax eloquent about the smoky, peaty, campfire tastes of a good scotch, but the drink has always made me gag. This is troublesome because of my partial Scottish heritage, and because I'll never be a worldly film noir private eye until I can drink a stiff glass of scotch.

And so I have decided to apply the system once more. By providence I was recently given a bottle of nineteen year old Bruichladdich (said "Brook-laddie"), which I plan to drink regularly in the evenings. Yes, it sounds like I'm ritualizing my descent into alcoholism, but this is really just a small step in refining my palate.

I had my first taste tonight. While I did shudder after the first sip, the scotch was much smoother than I anticipated . Maybe it's that this bottle is about three times more expensive than anything else I've tried. Surprisingly there was a fruit note. I don't know what kind of fruit, exactly: something complex and lingering. Grapefruit, maybe. And of course there was smoke. I don't know how to reconcile all these different tastes.

I can see that there's a long road ahead of me. Somehow I'll manage.