It took a while for me to understand the difference in taste between "sweet" and "dry" wines. My first (and I hope not too dopey) question was, how can a liquid be dry?

The distinction can still be hard to grasp, because some of the characteristics of wine, like high alcohol levels or the presence of oak, give a sensation of sweetness where in fact the wine's sugars have fermented away. Tannin in red wine can also leave your mouth with a dry, "chalky" feeling, even if the wine itself may have standard alcohol levels and therefore some residual sweetness in it. (No wonder the great aim of winemakers is "balance"!)

Sweetness, the wine books say, is a taste that you will recognize at the tip of your tongue, even if you hold your nose and don't smell a wine's fruitiness or other aromas. A dry wine will not show up at the tip of your tongue. What made all this more clear to me was a taste of champagne.

At a "bubbly" tasting, I learned that a Moscato d'Asti is very sweet, with an almost lemon-syrup flavor; a French-made sweet sparkling wine, Toad Hollow Risque, had a fresher, clearer flavor, and was a shade less syrupy. A "California champagne" of higher alcohol levels smelled like tart apples, and had a plain hard feeling in the mouth that was very different from the first two wines. And then came the real (if basic) thing: Laurent-Perrier. I sipped. I savored. I swallowed. And I thought: if you cooked stones in water, and then added bubbles, it would be this.

I didn't care for it, though it pains me to say so because champagne seems so sophisticated that I feel I should like it. It is supposed to be the perfect experience. I understand that the work that goes into making champagne is Herculean in itself, so I have a new and slightly snobbish horror at what happens to whole cases of the stuff in Super Bowl locker rooms.

And I'm told that with time, everyone's palate "dries out." You start appreciating champagne. Okay. I'll wait.