Will I ever be able to taste wine like a pro?

As we approach the finish line of this course, I am pleased that I have learned so much more about wine and the dynamics of the industry from a business perspective.  Nevertheless, from the angle of wine appreciation, I am afraid my knowledge and experience may not have caught up as quickly as I would desire.  I could not help but wonder whether I would one day be able to confidently describe what I was drinking with the appropriate wine language?

On the Internet, one can easily spot numerous websites and courses that teach people how to taste wines like a pro (or at least look like one).  Techniques like how to swirl your glass, look at the color and viscosity, smell the aroma or its "nose", and taste it for sweetness, acidity, tannin and body, etc. are covered. However, I guess my question is whether my palate can really be trained or developed to eventually tell the differences - sometimes very subtle ones - from glass to glass?

Please do not get me wrong, I do not doubt the ability of professional wine critics, sommeliers or enthusiasts in doing what they are good at doing, like telling good wines from bad ones, articulating the differences between various growths of a Bordeaux red, or giving recommendations on what wine to pair with Peking Duck.

But as I did the assigned reading by Roman L. Weil for Tuesday's class, I kept wondering whether the palate of each and every individual is equally "trainable"?  I mean, arguably some people are just born with a more sensitive palate than others - in a way like some people see or hear better, right?  Now eye sight and hearing are easier to be tested because if you can see a far away object clearly while others cannot, or hear a sound so low that is inaudible to others, then we can conclude you have superior eye sight or hearing. Taste, on the other hand, seems more difficult because, apart from the basic sensations of salty, sour, sweet and bitter which are more distinct (even so, the degree of, say, saltiness of a food item may still taste differently from A to B), perhaps the more subtle differences in taste or flavor that are frequently used in describing wines would require a more sensitive palate to differentiate? In that case, could it be possible that my palate is just not good enough for the job?

Then I stumbled upon this article on The Guardian, which talks about, among other things, the "sheer complexity of wine" that makes ordinary drinkers and even experts poor at blind tasting of wine.  The late Australian wine scientist Dr Bryce Rankine had "identified 27 distinct organic acids in wine, 23 varieties of alcohol in addition to the common ethanol, more than 80 esters (?) and aldehydes (??), 16 sugars, plus a long list of assorted vitamins and minerals that wouldn't look out of place on the ingredients list of a cereal pack". And while professionals are able to distinguish the balance of the three basic elements in a wine - sweetness, sourness and bitterness - with the taste buds on the tongue, the flavor of wine - its aroma or bouquet - has to be detected "by millions of receptors in the olfactory bulb, a blob of nervous tissue where the brain meets the nasal passage".

In this respect, chemists also identified at least 400 aroma compounds that work on their own and with others to create complex flavors.  While some are present in the grapes (primary), others are generated by yeast activity during fermentation (secondary) or formed as wine matures in barrels or bottles (tertiary).

The good news, though, is that according to Dr James Hutchinson (a wine expert at the Royal Society of Chemistry), our olfactory system is very clever in detecting aromas and our brain is great at interpreting them.  And he believes that "everyone has the same equipment and it comes down to learning how to interpret it".  Normally, within eight tastings, most people can learn to detect and name a reasonable range of aromas in wine.

So I guess, the problem I am facing now is that I have not tasted enough wine yet. Looks like I have a good reason to open a bottle or two come this weekend... : )