Your palate, predicted.
Palate profile · version 15 · boundary-tested
One engine — a mineral & saline spine, freshness, and worked texture, with fresh fruit leading. Power, oak, body, ripeness, and colour are neutral. Three ways to lose you: dominant flesh, stewed fruit, or Pinotage.
Palate fingerprint
How much each trait belongs in your glass — 0 to 10
The sweet spot sits between two failure modes
Too clean
reductive · neutral · austere
Your zone
mineral tension + worked texture + fresh fruit
Too much
flesh-led · stewed · heavy
Primary characters you love
The savory split — your most important distinction
schist · slate · graphite
volcanic · chalk · saline
soil-earth · olive · garrigue · dried herb · fynbos
tar · rose · truffle (Nebbiolo)
meat · bacon fat · charcuterie
blood · iron · ferrous
game · fur · dried-meat
barnyard · brett funk
The line is flesh, not earth — and about dominance, not presence. Flesh leading = reject; flesh finishing under fresh fruit = fine (the aired Pommard). The dried-meat / ferrous register — not the herbal fynbos, which you like — is strong enough to sink an otherwise-perfect wine (David & Nadia Elpidios).
The fruit profile
Colour is neutral; freshness is the axis. You like the whole red-to-blue arc — what matters is that the fruit reads fresh and primary, never cooked.
fresh · crunchy · juicy · tart — any colour
jammy · stewed · baked · prune · fig · porty
Blue fruit is a freshness marker: blueberry & blackberry ride with violet and tension in high-altitude Malbec, cool Syrah, and Cabernet Franc.
The terroir heuristic — why the freshness is there
Your loves cluster on the sites that manufacture freshness. For an unknown bottle, this often beats knowing the grape:
A ceiling, not a guarantee — the wine still needs transparency to reach it (two cool-climate Pinots, McKinlay & Creation, still missed). And a warm, ripe wine can land if acidity holds (Alto Moncayo).
What predicts your reaction — vs what doesn't
What misses — boundary tested · 11 of 13 dislikes predicted
Belle Glos · Pucará Malbec · Numanthia Termes · Aresti · Mont Rochelle Chard
David & Nadia Elpidios · Terre Brûlée — dried-meat, game, ferrous
Kanonkop Kadette · Lanzerac — isoamyl, rubber, rustic
Somos Naranjito — harsh / volatile
McKinlay · Creation — cool terroir isn't enough
The quality floor: your own grapes fail in their commercial / extracted form — Termes vs your Pintia, Pucará vs your high-altitude Malbec. And SA splits: Stellenbosch Bordeaux-style yes; Swartland Rhône-style (dried-meat / ferrous, not the fynbos) no.
Signature grapes & benchmark bottles
The white lane — four strands, one engine
Serving levers
First impressions of flesh are usually a state (young, closed), not a verdict — an hour of air rescued the Pommard from reject to love.
Predictions tracker
Built across fifteen rounds · ~50 loves, 13 dislikes · boundary tested and holding · loved traits in green, rejects in red, neutral axes in grey.
Predict, then record reality. The model is right until a bottle proves it wrong — and the misses are where it learns.
Test bench — predict, then record reality
The cellar — bottles that landed.
The reject pile — where the boundary lives.
Your tasted wines — tap one to add grape, region, vintage, a rating, and notes.
Bottles you own.