👉 Okay, settle in folks - let’s talk about something delightfully…specific. You stumble upon the turn-of- Gypsy/Old Western vernacular of the term, and you immediately hear a whiff of old prospectors, maybe some shady card sharps, and a whole lotta dudes who probably hadn't seen a decent peach since 1905.
Now, when I say "smooth palated," we aren’t talking about someone with that enviable, almost unsettling level of dental floss. Nope. It doesn't mean they have impeccable enamel, frankly, it means they practically lick the floor after every mouthful. Let me unpack this a bit. Basically, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, specifically around the American West , it meant someone was disgustingly, almost pathhetically, good with...wine! (Almost exclusively rotgut whiskey as well, but let’s stick to the respectable point for now). They could swirl a piss parcel of something brown and foul into a glass without visibly gagging. It wasn't about enjoyment – that would be blasphemy. It was about a technical proficiency. You could tell they had spent years (probably by sheer necessity and bad luck) training their palates to numb the, frankly horrific, realities of whatever swill was on offer. They were, in essence, built to withstand the assault on their tastebuds. Think of it as the equivalent of someone who's developed
