So, um, where is the title anyway? Well, there isn't one, really. Dickinson rarely gave her poems titles, and the ones that appear to have titles may not actually be titles at all but just a way to refer to the poems in her letters. There are a few theories on why she didn't use titles, some of them a little overly complicated and full of words that even scholars might have to look up in the dictionary. However, the most popular theory is that titles are only necessary for published poetry and, as far as we know, Dickinson didn't plan on her work being published during her lifetime. Of course, none of this kept friends, family, and publishers from pushing their own agendas with Dickinson's work.
Dickinson enjoyed sharing her work with people she cared about or admired. It's this literary generosity that led to several of her poems being published anonymously, some without her knowledge. What we call "A taste of liquor never brewed" is one of those poems. It was published, without attribution, in the Springfield Daily Republican on May 4, 1861 with the title "May Wine." It's not a bad title as titles go, but there are some basic problems with it that we think might have caused the poet to wrinkle her nose at it a little. First is the fact that it's so very obvious. Dickinson isn't really one to spell things out, and "May Wine" seems a little obvious to us. For example, take a look at her poem "A narrow Fellow in the Grass". It's pretty obvious that the poem is about a snake, but the words "snake" or even "reptile" never make an appearance in the poem. There's also the fact that "May Wine" misses the mark on the season in the poem. On line 7, the poet plainly states that it's the summer days that are so full of her brand of liquor, and last time we checked, May counts as spring, even back in 1861. No, we don't think Emily would have been pleased with this title at all.
We've also seen the poem titled simple with a number. In 1955, Thomas H. Johnson collected all the known poems of Emily Dickinson and put them in chronological order as best as he could determine. Johnson felt that "I taste a liquor never brewed" was poem number 214. Later, in 1998, R. W. Franklin did the same thing and came up with a slightly different order for the poems, identifying this one as number 207.