Taste is the discipline of perceiving quality in non-consensus ways, before results are in, and trusting the perception. Not a sensibility you either have or don't, but a 9-step cognitive loop you can train. Each step is a distinct mental action: receive what's in front of you cleanly, interpret it against references and language, resolve into a verdict you'll defend.
The hard part isn't the steps. It's clearing your own instrument so the signal at each step is your real response, not a performed one. Desire, snobbery, pride, ego, envy, jealousy: each replaces what you actually perceive with what you wish to perceive. The discipline underneath taste is closer to meditative than analytical.
The essays below decompose the loop and apply it to AI quality, where most current advice stops at the floor and calls it the ceiling.