Beware pine nuts!

One of the questions I am asked most frequently is 'do wine tasters have to avoid certain foods?' I'm naturally pretty libertarian and tend to shy away from proscribing a long list of no-nos. Personally, I find mint toothpaste one of the tastes most inimical to wine. Any wine tasted soon after brushing one's teeth with a standard toothpaste tends to be robbed of its true character on the palate – tasting instead rather metallic. For that reason, I favour the much gentler-flavoured fennel or liquorice toothpastes sold by health food stores.

A food that leaves wine, especially white wine...