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Whether drinking for fun or for work, tasting too many wines in one day can take a toll on your mouth. Mike Supple checks out a new product that is designed to solve the problem of palate fatigue.
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Mike Supple: You're watching "Screw It" on SuppleWine. I'm your host Mike Supple.

I have two problems when it comes to tasting a whole lot of wine, whether I'm in the office or out visiting wineries. The two problems are dehydration and my palate going dead so I can't taste everything I want to taste. The first problem is a pretty simple fix. Since alcohol tends to dehydrate you, if you're tasting wine, drink a lot of water. The second issue of palate fatigue is caused by the sugar, tannins and alcohol in wine. They coat your mouth and work your tongue making it difficult to taste things. Until now there was not really any good quick fix to take care of this problem.

Two Cal Poly wine and viticulture students decided to tackle this problem, so they invented SanTásti, which is a sparkling beverage designed to cleanse your palate - basically to make everything taste just like it would if it were the first thing you were tasting. I can talk a little more about it later, but I really want to try it and see what it's all about. They recommend that to really show what SanTásti does, to take two wines - a light white wine and a heavy, tannic red. That way you can go back and forth and see if you can really taste any differences, and if SanTásti helps to refresh and cleanse your palate. I've taken that one step further to have a little more of a rigorous trial. I've gone with an aromatic white wine, the 2008 Nobilo Icon Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, New Zealand, which is a very fresh, vibrant and aromatic white wine that is light in body. For the red I chose the Ramos Pinto Collector Port. The reason this is taking it up a notch is because Port has a lot of alcohol, a lot of sugar and a lot of tannin. All three of those things really work in conjunction to wreck your palate. Going from a heavy, sweet red wine to a light white wine is particularly bad, as the sugar and tannins in the red are likely to make the white wine taste sour and bitter.

Following the SanTásti recommended procedure, I'm going to start by getting a baseline with the white wine. [Swirls and sniffs glass.] Very fragrant and aromatic. A lot of fresh tomato vine with some lemongrass and a lot of ripe, ruby grapefruit. [Tastes.] Ok, so I've got my baseline. It tastes a lot like it smells. It's very fresh and crisp, but pretty light in body, so this Port is definitely going to overpower it. Along with the ruby grapefruit it has some lighter hints in the background of passion fruit, grass and flint, so it will be interesting to see how much of that I'll be able to taste after the red wine.

[Swirls the Port.] I can smell a lot of alcohol in that, and it smells sweet. [Tastes the wine, swishing thoroughly.] I really swished it around in my mouth to make sure I coated my entire mouth, and I'm getting a big, drying feeling. There's a lot of tannin in there. It's really drying out my tongue and the back of my mouth. It's a nice Port. There's a lot of alcohol, but it's pretty well balanced. There's a lot of really dark fruit - blackberries, black cherries - along with toasted oak and dark chocolate. A lot of sugar, but good acid. As a wine itself, it's pretty well balanced.

Back to the white wine to see what it tastes like now. [Smells and tastes.] I can definitely still taste the wine, but all I could really taste that time around was the herbal quality. It had some nice fresh lemongrass, which tastes good in Sauvignon Blanc, but by itself it seems a little one-dimensional. I'm not really getting any lingering flavors at all - it sort of died quickly. I still have that heavy Port feeling sitting in the back of my mouth. And it's turning the fresh ruby grapefruit into more of a bitter white grapefruit pith flavor. It still tastes like a good wine, but it's not as fresh and delicious as it was the first time around.

Now I'm going back to the red to recoat my palate in sugar and tannins. [Drinks Port again.] Definitely starting to feel the alcohol burn on my tongue, along with the thick inky flavors. I'm going to try the SanTásti now to see what that does. [Cracks open bottle.] It's bubbling a little bit. It's lightly sparkling - about half the amount of regular sparkling water - to make sure you don't overpower your palate with bubbles. [Drinks and swishes SanTásti.] This honestly doesn't really taste like anything. It has a little sugar and citric acid in there, but I really can't taste a whole lot - which is a good thing when tasting wine, because I don't want more flavors interfering with the wine. After drinking it my mouth does feel less heavy, and the SanTásti does seem to be doing its job. I don't have that drying sensation in my tongue anymore - it has pulled the tannins away - and I also don't have that heavy cloying sugar feeling either. Let's see if it makes any difference in the flavors when I got back to the white wine.

[Tastes white wine again.] That is really interesting. That really does bring back the ruby grapefruit - it really brings out the fruit. I'm able to feel the whole wine again, and I'm actually getting some lingering flavors too. That's pretty impressive. It does a pretty good job.

So head on over to SanTasti.com and try a couple of samples - set up your own little experiment - and see what it's all about for yourself. If you really want to enjoy your wine as much as you can, on whatever level that is, this will help you do that. It will refresh you and make you feel good. You don't have to worry about what order you taste your wines in - throw wrong and right out the window. Taste some wines, have fun, have some SanTásti, stay hydrated and enjoy it.