6 minute read
How to Run a Wine Tasting at Home
Tasting wine. At home...
Now that wine is as comfortable with people as people are with it, wine has been largely normalised. It is no longer snobbish. As a result, confident and natural wine drinkers often like to conduct wine tastings in private homes. Good intentions are often ruined by poor execution, however. So if you are considering investing in a wine tasting at home, here are some hints.
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WORDS BEN CANAIDER
HOW SERIOUS?
Beginners, wine geeks, or professional sommeliers, it matters not who is invited, but the tone you settle on. Is it informal (AKA people just have a few drinks and end up discussing politics rather than the wines) or do you lean more towards a formal tasting atmosphere? The latter is the only choice. And this level of seriousness is set by your attitude and manner, by the way you’ve got the tasting organised, and by the literature you furnish your tasting victims with, such as photocopied tasting sheets.
A TASTING ROOM: ENVIRONMENT AND FACILITIES.
Of course, in proper houses in proper postcodes, proper people wouldn’t host a proper wine tasting without first engaging a proper architect to design and build a proper tasting facility, or tasting laboratory. Ashamedly, I’ve known people who have conducted a wine tasting and have not done this. They’ve just put a white tablecloth over the dining room table and put a few glasses around. It’s up to you.
Certainly you need some space - so clear the table and put a white cloth or white butchers’ paper down. White? You need a white background in order to see the wine’s colour (more on this below). Turn off the TV and the music, the iPods and the lava lamps, and ask everyone to put their toys - I mean portable phones on to “mute”. And eschew aftershave or perfume. You want to smell the wine in front of you, not the estate agent to the left of you. Time of day is another important consideration. Just before lunch or just before dinner is the best time to assess wine, as this is when you are more than likely to be hungry, hence your senses are at their most attentive and pert.
Be thematic. Stick to one variety; say chardonnay. The keep-it-simple approach. Or stick to one region; say the Yarra Valley. Do it by vintage; say McLaren Vale 2015 shiraz. By price isn’t a bad idea if your victims are keen on QPR - quality price rapport. So six whites under $15, no matter what variety. There’s a good chance they’ll hate them all. Tastings of red wines “for cellaring” will get youngish men along, because all youngish men want to do is cellar wine forever. They are usually in financial services.
But I find the best way to conduct a wine tasting at home is to use the following six wines: a sauvignon blanc; a chardonnay; a rosé; a pinot noir; a shiraz; and then a cabernet sauvignon.
And the reason is simple: this is the quickest way to trick people into learning about wine. The varieties are all remarkably different in the way they smell and taste, hence people remember them by their differences. They are struck by the way they can discern the difference between sauvignon blanc and chardonnay. The former is pungent and sharp; the latter is more peachy and more textural. The only trick to this trick is getting wines that are from regions where varietal definition is strong. So New Zealand sauvignon blanc, Margaret River chardonnay; rosé from anywhere because it is pink and that’s enough for anyone to learn on one night, pinot from the Yarra Valley, shiraz from the Barossa; and cabernet from Coonawarra.
WHAT YOU NEED FOR A TASTING
• White table cloth or white butchers paper • Pour into carafes or decanters prior to guest arriving • Marker to number the bags • Wine glasses (this will all depend of how many wines you’re tasting and how formal the tasting) • Spittoon or buckets to spit • Tasting sheets and pens for your guests to take notes
DOWNLOAD OUR TASTING SHEET ONLINE AT EXPLOREDRINKS.COM
TUTORED TASTING OR UNTUTORED?
Do you lead the tasters through the wines, wine by wine, or do you let them taste them all and then discuss? For beginners, which is about 99 per cent of the population, go for a very structured and tutored tasting. Taste and compare the two whites before revealing which is which. Taste the rosé unthinkingly. Then taste the three reds and focus on the power or weight of the wines. Pinot through to shiraz, through to cabernet.
THE MECHANICS OF THE TASTING.
If you can pre-pour the wines into glasses labeled by number: 1, 2, 3, and so on, this eliminates a few potential problems. Letting tasters pour from masked bottles themselves is fraught with difficulty, as someone will end up pouring bottle # 4 into glass # 5… Having masked bottles on the table can give away too much information, too. A riesling bottle is distinctive, even when wrapped in aluminium foil to hide the winery’s name.
As you discuss each wine stick to the following points, and include them as prompts on the tasting sheets you provide:
Colour: Pale colour in whites suggest youth; browning in red wine suggests bottle age. Aroma: Aroma is primary. Fruit. The smell of the grape. In sauvignon blanc it is passion fruit and gooseberry and cut grass. It is a natural smell. Bouquet: This is a secondary smell, made by the cruel hand of man. Or woman. Oak is this smell. In cabernet and shiraz it will smell like Bundaberg Rum, like coconut, like aftershave, or like rum n’ raisin ice cream. Palate: Acidity, fruit, alcohol, tannin, sweetness… Gosh, the palate, or the taste of wine. Flavour meets texture meets acidity and tannin. Some simple and very primary wines taste like they smell: sauvignon blanc tastes like cut grass and passionfruit. Chardonnay can smell like peach and apple, but tastes like custard. Cabernet can smell like blackberries and cassis but tastes like a black cup of tea. Why? Wines high in acid - like sauvignon blanc - are driven by that acidity. They are fresh and fast. Wines high in fruit - like chardonnay - are driven by the marriage of that fruit with winemaking artifact. So peach and apple fruit meet yeast lees and oak. And wine high in tannin - like cabernet - are destined to be dry and long-lived. Dry like sucking on a tea bag.
Seriously, if all you can do in one wine tasting is make your friends see these fundamental principles in each wine variety, and to drive the point home by effective comparison, you’ve done more that most people ever do when they recommend a wine to the person next to them at a dinner party.
Oh, and remember: don’t be afraid to spit the wine out during the tasting. It adds to the seriousness and keeps the faculties sharp. There’ll be drinking later on.
