She cannot explain how

Vincenza is training to be a sommelier, which is an expert on wine. Her task in class is simple to describe: taste a wine, then say what it costs.

Her instructor gives her advice. Watch for the crisp apricot notes. Notice the rich cabernet flavours. Vincenza nods, and understands none of it. The words describe what she is tasting, but they do not tell her what to do with it. Knowing a wine tastes of apricot does not tell her whether apricot means expensive.

Her early guesses are not close. Some miss by a wide margin.

By the end of those first classes she is thoroughly discouraged. The problem is not that she tastes nothing. It is that she cannot tell what the tasting means. Is this sharpness the crisp of an expensive bottle, or a cheap one that never found its ? The same sensation could be either, and no one can tell her which.

Weeks later, something has shifted. Her guesses are much closer, even on bottles she has not tasted before.

Ask her what changed and she cannot say. The skill arrived without an explanation attached.