June 8, 2003
How To Conduct a Wine Tasting
Part OneThe firey Scottish nationalist and epicure, Aeneas Macdonald, wrote in his book simply titled "Whisky" that the beverage is "learnt from bottles not books." So true, and the same can be said about wine.
Conducting wine tastings can be great social events, much like bridge games were for our parents generation. Getting together with like-minded s folks for food and wine can be a good learning experience and a lot of fun too.
For starters let's talk about blind tasting, vertical tastings and horizontal tastings.
I am a member of a small group that meets occasionally over at Charlie's in Los Alamos which is so open-ended, we have some wines blind and others not. Some very good friends who are professional winemakers like Bob Lindquist of Qupe oppose blind tasting altogether, arguing that blind tastings are nothing but beauty contests.
- Blind means you put the bottles in paper bags or carafes so the taster can't read the label. "A little knowledge can be dangerous." For total novices, tasting blind probably isn't important, but among wine drinkers who have some knowledge (or think they have), it is said you are drinking the label, not the wine.
If you want to learn about wine and know nothing about it, I would agree with Bob Lindquist. Don't use the blind method, because you want to learn by tasting which involves reading the label and not conduct a beauty contest!
One of the most fun and informative tastings I ever held I did out on my deck. The theme was "summer whites-anything but chardonnay." We did it blind. I think it's a great way to test your sensory perception about wine. You end up trying to figure out which is the sauvignon blanc, riesling, viognier, roussanne, muscat and gewurztraminer. For tasters like myself, this is a very great exercise.
- A vertical tasting is where all the wines are different vintages, but from the same vineyard or same producer. I remember tasting a "vertical" of BV Private Reserves (1949-1973) at the Heublein International Wine Auction once in San Francisco in 1984.
- A horizontal tasting is where the vintage is the constant, and the producers are different-for example six different Santa Barbara County pinot noirs from 2001.
- Limit the number. My favorite food writer, M.F.K. Fisher, once wrote if you have a dinner party where you want the food to be the focus, keep it small-no more than six guests. I think the same rule should apply to a wine tasting gathering. If you want the wine to be the focus, keep the number at ten or less.
- Establish parameters for the tasting. For total novices I suggest "just bringing a wine you like-any variety" as a great theme. And don't do it blind. Look at the label; take notes.
If you decide the theme is a varietal like syrah, limit it. At a recent tasting I was invited to, one guest brought a 1983 vintage syrah. Everybody else brought current or recent vintage syrahs. The 1983 vintage was so different from the rest, it got sandbagged and didn't deserve to be.
Even in commercial wine judgings, a wine that is obviously different from the rest in a flight may wine a medal simply because it's different from the rest - not because it's good, but because it's different! A Zaca Mesa roussanne won a gold medal at a fair competition once. It turned out it was one of those wines that was really a viognier. It stood out from the rest the same way a 20 year old syrah did in a flight of recent vintages. (A number of vineyards in California including Zaca Mesa had purchased cuttings of roussanne that were really viognier.)
Times wine columnist, Bob Senn, lives in the Los Alamos Valley and owns the Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium.
