Starting a Wine Tasting Club

[tammylc]

I'm starting a wine tasting club and looking for ideas. I thought I had a wine book in the basement with a good home tasting course, but I can't find it, so I'm trying to come up with a plan on my own. (I've looked at the EGCI course, but it doesn't quite meet my needs.)

A bunch of the people who are interested have little or no experience with wine, so I want to have a plan that will get everybody familiar with the basics before we just start tasting randomly. I figured I'd start with the most common varietals, whites in the first meeting, reds in the second. But where to go from there? Some of that will depend on what everybody wants to do, but what do you think would be most useful for a beginning wine drinker? We could focus on a characteristic, like oak, and compare oaked and unoaked chardonnay, etc. Go further in depth into a specific varietal and compare the effects of terroir by looking at the same varietal from different countries (Sancerre vs New Zealand SB). Go further in depth into a particular country or region (Bordeaux, Italy).

How does this sound? Any other ideas or suggestions? How many wines do you think is reasonable to taste during an hour long meeting?

I have a little more experience than most, but I'll be learning right along with the rest, so I'm not an expert instructor or anything.

Thanks!

[redwinegulper]

Tammy,

You can go 50 different directions, but I would keep the number one goal is to have fun. That will keep it from being stuffy, and you will learn tons.

You learn from tasting, the more you taste, the more you will know. I think the best book for the basics is the Windows on the World Wine Course by Kevin Zraly.

I remember once taking a wine class from Kevin Z, and he said "who ever likes the cheapest wine wins". So, taste the wines blind (cover with papaer bag) and draw your own opinions, if you like a $5 wine, good for you

I would have 5-10 people at the tasting

I would have each bring one bottle

Another way is you preselect the wines and everyone chips in

If you like Chards, taste Chards

Have a bucket to empty your glass after each wine

Write down your impressions as you smell and taste

Rate each wine from 1 -10

When finished, rip off bags and discuss

Remember, no one is right or wrong, everyone has an opinion

Tasting ideas:

Chards : Calif, Chablis, Burgundy, Chile Australia

Sauv Blanc: Calif, NV, Sancerre

Italian Whites: Soave, Pinot Grigio, Orvietto, Greco di Tufo,

Calif Cab vs. Bordeaux

Calif Zins

Syrah vs Shiraz - calif, rhone, australia

Hope this helps...Ed

[LOS]

I would suggest that your very first session focus on environment. I've run the following session for novices and it was very educational:

Flight number 1: buy 2 bottles of a decent white wine, and put bags over the bottles. Serve the wine in 2 different glasses, a red wine glass and a white wine glass. See what their opinions are of the 2 different wines.

Flight number 2: repeated, but with a red wine.

Flight number 3: buy 3 bottles of another decent red wine. Put bags over the bottles. Serve one at about 50 F, one at about 65 F, and one at about 80 F (ie one too cold, one too warm, one just right). See what they think of the 3 different wines.

A good idea for the second session would be to focus on food/wine matches. You could start with 3 whites, a Cal chard, a Muscadet (not 2003!), and a German riesling. First, taste the wines without food. Second, taste the wines with apples. Third, taste the wines with something a bit spicy (asian, probably).

I think this sort of basic education is necessary before you are really ready to begin learning about different wines.

[Freckles]

Hi, Tammy. What a great idea!

I actually started a wine tasting group here in Paris last year and we've been going strong ever since. I can tell you what worked for us, knowing that you mightnt want to do the same thing at all.

We have 5 women in our group. Each month, we meet at one person's apartment and she is responsible for teaching the rest of us one topic from a book. We started with Jancis Robinson's Learning to Taste and have now moved on to Andrea Immer's Great Wines made Simple. That month's host does everything for the meeting. She chooses and buys 5 wines (we have a minimum that we each have to spend, just to ensure that no one gives us only really cheap crap to drink. One member sticks close to that limit, and two consistently pay more, since they are interested in learning about higher end wines and have better paying jobs. So, we get to sample a great variety of lower and higher priced wines). She also gets a bit of snacky food for us, so we dont drink on an empty stomach. As the organizer, I picked the topics we were going to cover, because some chapters in the books are more interesting or useful than others. But besides that, the individual hosting does all the set up and clean up for that month; then she gets to sit back and relax for the next 4 months.

Needless to say, we dont finish the 5 bottles! We spend about 2 hours learning about the topic, tasting the wines and generally trying to stick to our subject rather than veering off into gossip, etc. We evaluate each wine on a sheet that I got when doingwine classes at the Cordon Bleu: pretty standard. We have actually learned a surprising amount and are still going strong.

Hope this helps give you some ideas! Good luck

Freckles

[chefzadi]

A good idea for the second session would be to focus on food/wine matches. You could start with 3 whites, a Cal chard, a Muscadet (not 2003!), and a German riesling. First, taste the wines without food. Second, taste the wines with apples. Third, taste the wines with something a bit spicy (asian, probably).

Great suggestion. I'd also like to suggest wine and cheese tastings. I wish there were more questions here regarding food and wine.

[Dana]

I'll second the reccomendation for Andrea Immer's Great Wines Made Simple. I really learned a lot from her and her style is aproachable and fun. Wish I lived in your neighborhood. Sounds like a lot of fun!!!

[tammylc]

Just thought I'd post an update. (And another question, of course.) So far we've had three meetings of the wine club, and everyone's having a great time! We've had 10-12 people at each meeting.

At our first meeting we tasted 4 white wines - a chardonnay, reisling, sauvignon blanc, and pinot grigio. I purchased all of the wines (with guidance for my helpful wine store owner) and people chipped in to cover the costs. We tasted them blind, all of us tasting the same wine at the same time, and discussed what we were noticing. I made up some tasting sheets and talked about the different characteristics of wine in general (aroma, body, acidity, etc) and also a description of what to expect from each of the varietals. Everyone had four separate glasses so they were able to go back and forth and compare the wines, and people really liked that. The tasting sheet included a spot to rate how well you liked the win on a five point scale. After we'd tasted all four wines we took off the bags and got to see how well we'd done at guessing which was which.

The format for the second meeting was the same, only with reds - pinot noir, merlot, cabernet sauvignon and syrah. Those of us who are more on the wine geek end of the spectrum were really surprised that our favorite of the four was the California Cab (2001 Pierano Estate Vineyards Lodi), so for our next meeting we decided to focus on cabernet sauvignon.

The group generally only has time to meet for about an hour, and we're usually meeting on a weeknight and thus not wanting to drink a lot, so four wines seems to be about the right number. But that can make it hard to get a good cross section to compare. For the Cab meeting I got a bottle of Bordeaux, one from Chile, a mid-priced California Cab, and a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck as a ringer. The group had requested that we start serving food with the wine, so based on the advice of my cheesemonger, I picked up a Cantal and a really stinky brie. First we tasted the four wines on their own and gave them a score on their own, then we tasted them with food and scored them again. Although Cabernet was probably not the best place to start experimenting with food pairings, there were definitely some significant differences. The Two-Buck Chuck actually scored reasonably well on its own, but fell apart utterly when tasted with food. The other California Cab (2002 Echelon) got much better when the rich cheese mellowed out some of the harsh tannins.

Okay, now on to the question. We've decided to go back to white wines for our next meeting, and the group picked Germany as our destination. Now, obviously what wines I get will be influenced by what my wine seller has available (luckily I have a wine seller locally who usually has an excellent selection of German wines) but any thoughts on what direction to take the tasting? Rieslings at different levels of ripeness (kabinett, spatlese, auslese)? I'd love to open a bottle with some age on it for comparison purposes, but I don't have a cellar and the store is unlikely to have much (I did stumble across some there a couple years ago - however my friend bought them all). All kabinett or spatlese, but different regions or different producers? Any thoughts or ideas?

LOS - thanks for the ideas - I think the group could really get into that sort of thing now, so I'll keep that in mind for a future meeting. Especially the more structured suggestions for the wine and food pairing experiment - do you have any other specific suggestions/ combinations along those lines?

[Brad Ballinger]

I think you may have some difficulty with tasting German riesling wines at various degrees of "ripeness" primarily because in recent vintages you will find many kabinetten produced with grapes picked at auslese ripeness. The terms kabinett and so forth refer to the minimum amount of sugar in the grapes when picked and not the amount in the final bottled product -- although producers try to make kabinett taste like kabinett and not like auslese. If you go this route, I'd try to stick to the same producer in the same vintage.

You may wish instead to focus on different regions -- Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Rheinghau, Nahe, Rheinhessen, Pfalz. This is probably the path I would take with all kabinetten or spatlesen. But you can also just get QbA wines (these don't carry ripeness designations), and you will find producers of these wines from all regions if your retailer has a good selection as you say.

You can also try wines that are labeled trocken or halbtrocken. You can try wines made from riesling, scheurebe, huxelrebe, albolonga, sylvaner, etc.

[tammylc]

Thanks Brad - as is obvious, my understanding of German wine terminology is surface-level at best!

[Brad Ballinger]

I note you are from Ann Arbor. My guess is you are shopping at Village Corner. The staff should be able to help you very well.

[tammylc]

I note you are from Ann Arbor.  My guess is you are shopping at Village Corner.  The staff should be able to help you very well.

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We are lucky to have a number of good wine shops in Ann Arbor, and I've been spreading my purchasing around. But yes, for this one I was planning to buy from Village Corner because they have such a good selection and are so knowledgeable about German wines.