All a matter of taste

I had a little chocolate-tasting party today – two friends brought over an assortment of Scotches to trial (10 Scotches including the ones I personally have) and I invited them to try the Armagnac, Cognac, port, etc. ganaches that I had put together yesterday.  So we got out bundles of plastic spoons (to go back in the dishwasher later) and dug in.

It was enlightening.  We disagreed about virtually everything!  The Armagnac I thought was too harsh/young was their favorite; they loved the port with muscat syrup, which I couldn’t taste at all; one of them couldn’t distinguish between the two Cognacs, which I thought were radically different.  About the only thing we all agreed on was that the port+golden raisins was better than the port+Zante currants.  (Also that the Chambord was great – although, Mike thought it was too sweet.)

From this I conclude that it really is all a matter of taste, and that people taste things very differently.  (Not too surprising since I think the current estimate is that only about 50% of people have any given nasal receptor.  Our taste buds may be similar, but our sniffers are very different!)  Quality will still “out”, but between the different variations it’s mostly a matter of personal preference.

All in all, the winners are the port with golden raisins, the Chambord, and the Armagnacs, which (to me) were much more interesting than the Cognacs.

I have made a third set of test batches, this time with chrysanthemum tea, licorice root, and pear – 15 samples in total.  (I added Armagnac, Cognac, Poire William, and lavender to the pear, and did white and dark chocolate versions of each.)  I am deathly curious how the chrysanthemum teas will come out but will have to wait until tomorrow for the flavors to stabilize.

In other news, I spent two hours last night hacking my way through CSS and HTML in the process of upgrading my blog.  So now there is a tag cloud in the sidebar.  I hope you enjoy it.  🙂

I have also started reading through the book on Drupal 5 themes while at the gym.  (Yes, I started going back to gym a week or two ago.  Two thirty-mile rides on the weekends is not going to be enough to keep in shape; so I’m doing 20 minutes of cardio and 40 minutes of weightlifting three days a week in addition to the weekend rides.  Hopefully that will be enough to keep me from getting any more out-of-shape than I already am.)

There is never enough time to do all the things I’d like, so I’m reading the book on the exercise bike, during stretches, and in the 60-second break between weightlifting sets.  So now I’m on page 40 or so, and I’m starting to understand how themes work.  This is important for the work I’m doing on Weavolution.  Big learning curve, but I do think I’m starting to get my head around it.

Have I mentioned that I wish I had more TIME??