­Early taste experience in human infants, for example, has lasting effects on taste preferences, likely resulting in an appreciation of foods from someone’s youth and cultural heritage. Taste preferences also influence consumption of nourishing food and avoidance of dangerous substances. Although evidence suggests that early experience may influence preference, it is not known whether this effect is limited to critical periods or extends throughout life. Furthermore, the involvement of cortical circuits for taste in the establishment of taste preferences has not been investigated. Using a brief access test, we determined that exposure to a variety of tastes in weanling mice (early exposure “EE”) persistently enhanced the preference for sweet tastants compared to naïve mice exposed only to water and chow. The same exposure in adult mice did not affect sucrose preference, pointing to the presence of a sensitive window for the development of taste preference. The modulation of preference depended on the presence of nutrients and calories as well as an intact olfactory epithelium. EE modulated neural function, resulting in a relative increase in inhibition in gustatory cortex (GC) and sharpened representation of sucrose concentrations. In line with increased inhibition, we observed increased inhibitory synaptic transmission in GC following EE and accelerated accumulation of perineuronal nets (PNNs) on parvalbumin (PV+) expressing GABAergic neurons. Degrading PNNs with intra-GC infusions of chondroitinase ABC restored sensitivity to taste exposure in adults, indicating that accumulation of PNNs within GC are a limiting factor to the plasticity of taste preference. These results establish a link between early nutrition and brain development, point to the presence of a critical period for the postnatal modulation of taste preferences, and identify inhibitory circuits in GC as essential contributors to the formation and maintenance of the preference for sweet.