Tasting something wonderful for the first time is an WOW experience.
Flavors explode in your mouth and your taste buds send signals to your brain trying to figure out what you’re tasting. You quickly compare it to all those things you’ve tried before and then realize it is something new. You can see it in the person’s eyes as it happens. WOW, is this good, Wow, that’s wonderful!
It must be like that for children but in most cases they aren’t thinking about the flavors – they’re too busy enjoying. I’d often wished that I could have that “wow” sensation more often; an explosion of flavor, the discovery of something new. Well, sometimes you should be careful of what you wish for.
As a two-time cancer and chemo survivor, that wish came true a few years ago. Interestingly, it occurred with a glass of wine.
When you have chemo treatments the chemo does something to your taste buds. It deadens them and changes them so flavors are not the same and certainly not as vivid. Although you eat, often you don’t really enjoy the flavors. In some cases, the food almost has a metallic taste. For me this lasted for some time after the chemo treatments stopped … But then one day I experienced that flavor explosion!
It was with a glass of relatively inexpensive red wine. I took a sip of it and WOW! I felt like I could taste the grape right off the vine. The flavor was vivid once again and it was wine. I was drinking wine again, not some metallic-laced, nondescript juice. How wonderful it tasted. Since that day I have looked and tasted each glass of wine differently.
It is said that distance makes the heart grow fonder and while I’m not sure that’s true, I can tell you that if you really want to taste something like it’s the first time you’ve tasted it, just give it up for a while. Six months to a year should do it, then take a bite, you’ll have that WOW experience.
