Charlie the Tuna Had a Point

That reference surely dates me as well as anyone else who gets it.

Charlie the Tuna was a mascot for Starkist way back in the 1960’s. In adds that ran well into the 1980’s, Charlie, portrayed as a hipster, thought his “good taste” made him a perfect candidate to appear in a can of Starkist. But he was always rejected with the announcer stating “But Charlie, StarKist does not want tunas with good taste; they want tunas that taste good.”

In fact, Charlie was on to something but wrong to expect  Starkist would recognize it.

Matters of taste inevitably become entangled with external influences—social expectations, critical consensus, and prevailing trends. So being confident in your aesthetic choices requires having the resolve of a deep-rooted oak—unyielding in the face of trends, resistant to the pressures of passing fads.  Slogging your way through a novel you find pointless or suffering through an album that sounds like industrial machinery just because a critic at Pitchfork said it was cool does nothing but qualify you to teach a masterclass in misery. Starkist was right to be skeptical; tasting good always matters.

But that is only part of the story.

Good taste lies in the interplay between personal pleasure and the broader discourse of quality and meaning. The capacity to engage with aesthetic criteria beyond mere enjoyment allows for a richer, more informed experience of flavor.

Personal preference is paramount.  A person who finds solace in a particular style of cooking, a favorite tea, or a supermarket brand of cheese should not feel compelled to abandon those choices merely because they lack prestige. This principle extends to wine, where the fear of drinking ‘incorrectly’—that is, outside the boundaries of expert approval—often discourages personal exploration. If someone derives satisfaction from a familiar and reliable bottle night after night, there is no need to stage an intervention. The question, “Is this a good wine?” should first be met with, “Do you enjoy it?” before any external judgment is applied.

Charlie just couldn’t read the room.

However, this emphasis on subjective enjoyment does not preclude the pursuit of deeper engagement. When individuals seek to expand their palate, they must be willing to move beyond the hedonic threshold of “liking” something into the more complex realm of appreciation. There is a distinction between passive consumption and the active process of learning to appreciate something unfamiliar. Someone unacquainted with single-origin chocolate may initially find its bitterness unpalatable, yet through exposure and knowledge of its fermentation and roasting processes, they might develop an appreciation for its layered complexity. This openness to discovery marks the transition from preference to aesthetic inquiry.

Taste, in this sense, is not merely a function of immediate pleasure but is shaped by cultural, historical, and technical contexts. Consider the example of dry-aged beef. To an uninitiated palate, its umami intensity and distinctively nutty aroma may seem overpowering. However, understanding the science behind enzymatic breakdown, the role of moisture loss in concentrating flavors, and the tradition of dry-aging can reframe one’s experience. The same principle applies to traditional balsamic vinegar, which possesses a richness and viscosity that diverge sharply from the industrially produced versions commonly found in supermarkets. Its value is not solely in its taste but in its connection to an artisanal process maintained over generations.

Meaning, then, becomes a critical axis along which taste operates. A food’s significance is not only in its immediate sensory impact but in the broader narrative it carries. A hand-harvested sea salt, shaped by local climate and extraction techniques, holds a different appeal than a chemically refined alternative, even if the latter is engineered to be perfectly palatable. The role of context in shaping appreciation is especially apparent in cuisines that emphasize terroir, where geography, method, and history contribute as much to perception as flavor itself. The appreciation of an aged Comté, for example, is enriched by knowledge of the pastures where the cows graze, the microflora involved in its aging, and the skill of the affineur who determines its maturation.

This approach to taste does not reject pleasure but rather refines it through informed engagement. The insistence on “demystifying” wine or any other sophisticated gustatory experience often stems from an oversimplified division between accessibility and expertise. Yet, complexity itself is not an obstacle but an invitation. The real challenge is not to strip food and drink of their depth but to encourage curiosity rather than intimidation. Much as one would not expect to fully grasp classical music after a single performance, a single encounter with an unfamiliar cheese, coffee, or wine should not lead to a final verdict. Instead, taste should be viewed as a skill—one honed through patience, exposure, and the willingness to interrogate both pleasure and meaning.

I always thought Charlie’s shades were cool. Maybe Starkist missed the point.