My advice, akin to that recommended for the father of the bride, is "bring bread." Good white bread -- typically Italian or French -- is the standard palate-cleanser at tastings because it's neutral in flavor. If you watch professional wine buyers doing their work, they'll take a piece of bread and a drink of water between wines in order to judge each one from a standing start.

At social wine tastings, you'll often see cheese or even more substantial snacks like shrimp, roast beef, meatballs or bacon-wrapped chicken livers served, but this is not such a good idea when you're evaluating wines for purchase because appropriate food makes the wine taste better. You'll sometimes see apples and other fruit served with wine, but this doesn't work for me, as I find fruit seems to make the wine taste a little sour.

For this reader's purposes, though, an old saying in the wine trade surely applies: "Buy wine on bread; sell wine on cheese."

What's your opinion? Do you have a preferred "palate cleanser" for serious analysis or for fun? Write me at wine@wine-lovers-page.com and share your thoughts. And, as always, please don't hesitate to drop us a line if you'd like to comment on our topics and tasting notes, suggest a topic for a future bulletin, or just talk about wine.

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However, wine makers in Australia, South Africa and the U.S. have borrowed the name to use on similar-only-different wines, warm and strong and sweet. Our Australian cousins in particular are said to be wild about these wines, which they typically made in the oak-aged "tawny" style, not red but brown and so extremely sweet that they earn the nickname "stickies."

This one's an unusually impressive example, remarkable in its complexity, at a price that's more than fair in the luxury realm of dessert wines.

Hardys non-vintage Whiskers Blake Tawny Port ($14.99)
Dark amber with a reddish-copper hue, this fine dessert wine breathes delicious scents of mixed nuts and browned butter; it smells so good that we sit and sniff it for a long time before taking the first taste. Sweet and mellow, it blends flavors of dark, plummy fruit with rich milk chocolate, sweet oak and caramel -- in an odd way, it reminds this Kentuckian of a very fine Bourbon, without the heat. Though far afield from a traditional Port, it's a wonderful Oz "sticky," one of the best I've tasted. U.S. importer: International Cellars, Chantilly, Va. (May 7, 1999)

FOOD MATCH: Served by itself for after-dinner enjoyment as a dessert in its own right.

Quady's Batch 88 "Starboard" California Dessert Wine ($16.99)
In the interest of meeting European Economic Community requirements for export, Quady has dropped the "Port" name with a smiling nautical twist. The wine is very much in the tradition of Oporto, however; if not a great vintage Port, it could certainly pass as an example of the non-vintage "ruby" style. Inky dark garnet in color, it offers plummy fruit and pleasantly earthy nutlike scents. Sweet, pruney fruit flavors are well structured with a lemony acidic "grip." (May 8, 1999)

FOOD MATCH: Again, served alone for evening sipping.

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