The vitamin.vino Approach to Tasting Sessions
Preparing for an upcoming tasting exam? Looking to improve your tasting skills just for fun?
Regardless of what your wine goals are, tasting with a group is an indispensable component in learning wine and improving your tasting skills.
For the past couple of years, I did regular blind tastings with my WSET Diploma friends. We met almost every week, agonized over the exams together and shared in our successes, and I attribute a huge part of my Diploma to my awesome tasting group.
Now that I am done with the Diploma courses, I still try to do blind tastings with a few groups in New York City to keep up my wine tasting skills. Last week, I attended a BYOB tasting dinner in New York City with a mix of wine professionals I had recently met at industry events and some others who were total strangers.
Basically, these were real wine people, in comparison to me, the real estate finance lawyer moonlighting as a wine blogger for fun, and to be honest, before the tasting dinner, I felt a bit intimidated!
“What if I lost all my blind tasting skills?”
“What if I never had tasting skills and the Diploma was just a fluke?”
“What if I say something stupid and besmirch the reputation of the DipWSET?”
These anxious thoughts quickly went away, though, because the blind tasting was so much fun, everyone was so considerate, and I picked up a ton of insightful viewpoints on the wines we were blinding.
Tasting wine with a group of strangers can feel like a daunting process, but wine is a social experience of perpetual learning and improvement, and through these tasting sessions, I have found that wine truly brings people together. If you love wine but have not found your tasting group yet, here is the vitamin.vino approach to tasting sessions to get you on the path to finding and forming your own tasting group!
Preparing for the Tasting
Always Decant Your Wine Prior to the Tasting (Unless It’s a Sparkling Wine). Decanting times will vary depending on the wine you are planning to bring, but decanting provides a number of benefits that will enhance your tasting experience:
The decanted wine will be aerated and will be “open” by the time it is poured into the glasses. Therefore, the wine will be ready to reveal itself in its full magnitude at the beginning of the tasting session without requiring additional waiting time or super-aggressive swirling.
For very old wines, you can remove the sediments ahead of time, which can be a lengthy process.
Before the tasting, you can detect and determine whether the wine is faulty or just not good. If the wine has serious issues that haven’t blown off with some air in the decanter, then you can use this opportunity to bring a different bottle of wine to the tasting. Do not bring the bunk bottle, unless you want to provide an example of a specific wine fault!
You can switch the corks or even the bottles to prevent people from guessing the wines based on the bottle size or shape or the type of closure. Certain regions have very recognizable bottle sizes and shapes or closures (e.g., New Zealand wines with screwcaps, Alsace wines in the long flutes), and switching the bottle with a clean, empty bottle can make all the difference to figure out whether people are truly making educated guesses based on smell and taste.
Note: Pre-decanting the wine is tip #1 in this blog post because at this particular wine tasting, I broke my own rule and regretted it enormously. Because I was meeting real wine professionals I didn’t know, I brought a 2015 Moillard-Grivot Corton Grand Cru I bought last year in Burgundy. That day, I was rushing through work, and I brought the wine without decanting it at home. The bottle sat opened on the table for over an hour, and when we were sitting around tasting it, I immediately regretted my decision to bring the wine, as it was one of the weirdest, most disjointed wines I ever had. It did not display the symptoms of classical faults in wine (Brettanomyces, cork taint, excessive volatile acidity, moussiness, etc.), but it had an oddly specific aroma of chicharrones (pork rinds) but had a fruity profile on the mouth, and then wine also lacked all of the tension and finesse of Burgundy Pinot Noir, as it had a strange, stodgy structure. I was horrified by the wine I brought, and it was a Grand Cru Burgundy! Lesson learned - decant all still wines prior to tasting sessions so you have the option of bringing a different wine.
Avoid eating or drinking aromatic or intense foods or beverages that linger on the palate a few hours before the tasting session. I try not to eat or drink anything other than water for two to three hours prior to my tasting sessions so that my palate is not thrown off during the tasting. However, the one exception I make is having a few “palate calibrators” prior to my tasting sessions where I will purposefully have a couple of sips of white wine to calibrate my attunement to acidity, body and sweetness (or lack thereof). We often think that the first wine is much higher in acidity than it really is because it can be overwhelming on the palate, so having a base layer of wine can help stabilize your perspective on your first wine.
Consider bringing a snack or something extra for the group. My personal rule is that if someone is hosting a tasting at their home, I try to either bring a really special wine or otherwise snacks or additional drinks for the group. Hosting tasting sessions can require a lot of preparation, and it is just a nice gesture to bring something to help alleviate the host’s burdens (crackers, chips, a cheese, charcuturie, etc.). In addition, having something to munch on while talking about the wine helps keep inebriation at bay. If you are not into eating at your tasting sessions, a palate cleanser of beer or sparkling wine at the end of the tasting session also does wonders when everyone is a little fatigued from drinking still wines.
At The Tasting
Take notes and systematize your process. Your notes can be taken digitally on an app, a phone or an iPad, or you can write your notes out by hand. Regardless of the method, taking easily accessible notes should be a regular part of your tasting process. The WSET approach to wine is that the theory informs the tasting, and vice versa, and the notes are the evidence each person should review in order to make an educated guess. I am also a strong advocate for a consistent, regular system for writing tasting notes. Do you always write in certain colors? Use highlighters or shorthands? Everyone has their own method, but it should always be personalized to how the person learns and retains information best. Now that I am done with the WSET Diploma program, I no longer write the full quality assessment in my notebook, but I still always try to write down the quality level and couple of brief shorthand notes for why I chose that particular quality level. Also, I tend to write all my initial notes in one color and then I write all corrections, reversals or supplementary tasting notes from the discussions with the tasting group in another color, and I usually circle the top three or four aromas or impressions of the wine at the end of my review of the wine to be able to recall the standout aromas or features that truly left a lasting impression on me when I look back on the wine.
Use the spitoon. I always swallow a small amount of wine to gauge the level of alcohol. However, I try to spit or limit my intake of wine so that I can remember the wines and stay focused. It’s hard to call out wines accurately after a few glasses, and sometimes, the best wines are ones at the end, which makes it a shame to be too affected to appreciate those wines fully after six or more wines. Remember, you can always return to your favorite wines at the end!
Explain the “why” behind your guesses. I am a strong believer of the idea that the correct answer in a blind tasting is completely meaningless without a cogent explanation of how you arrived at that answer. People love the guessing game, but I have also noticed that people do not always always like to defend their claim on the variety, region or level of quality in the wine in front of them because they are shy or afraid of being wrong. My view is that everyone should be prepared to explain for each wine why they are making their guess, and even if the answer is not correct, if the explanation is sound based on the evidence in the glass and one’s theoretical knowledge of the wine, then that is still a job well done. In addition, I believe that the greatest value of blind tasting sessions is the opportunity to hear how other people get to to their conclusions. People catalog information about wine differently in their own memories, and having exposure to those viewpoints and considerations is an invaluable tool in improving one’s tasting skills. My favorite phrase I learned from this recent tasting: “If it smells like Viognier, but it tastes like nothing, it’s Torrontes.” I will not be forgetting that one next time I think I have a Torrontes in front of me.
Be considerate of others. From my personal experience, people in wine are some of the nicest, most considerate people I know. However, there are admittedly a few annoying snobs out there that ruin it for other people with their false superiority, and it seriously annoys me when people say, “You haven’t had [name the wine] before???” We all come from different experiences, we each have our own strengths and weaknesses, and people making others feel less experienced than them is one of the top reasons why many people people feel nervous about venturing into the world of wine and joining tasting groups in the first place. We should try to celebrate our tasting partners’ victories when they nail the wines and also try to encourage them to keep going when they have not figured out the wines. Disagreement is a healthy, expected part of tasting together, as it pushes us to hone in on our skills, and it can be done in a respectful and encouraging way.
Social Media Influencer Bonus Tip #1: Take all group photos before you start the tasting. Even if you are spitting the wines, the sheer volume of wine intake will often make people look and feel puffy and glassy-eyed and will cause unsightly teeth and lip staining after a few rounds of red wines. Although the natural instinct is to take the group photo at the end of the night when everyone is feeling the wine high, preempt the incredibly un-chic vampire look and take the group photo at the beginning of the session.
Social Media Influencer Bonus Tip #2: Phones off the table. Nothing ruins photos like having a gaudy electronic brick in view.
Post-Tasting
Do a Post-Mortem. Tasting sessions are a great opportunity to re-assess your tasting skills from both a sensory perspective and an analytical or procedural perspective. From my tasting sessions, I know where I fall short in terms of sensory skills - I have a hard time identifying precisely floral aromatics (i.e., identifying “hawthorne” or “acacia” and not just saying “white flower” or “blossom”) and white pepper notes - and I try to be mindful of these weaknesses. Are there aromas or flavors that you always overlook? I often forget about “licorice” and “quince,” so I try to actively think about whether those aromas are present at the tastings. Also, if you are preparing for a WSET Diploma exam, consider whether you are confident in your quality assessments or determinations of suitability for ageing, or if you need to spend more time practicing those components. Guessing is fun, but feeling yourself improve with self-reflection is even more fun.
Tip: For those who are preparing for the WSET Diploma tasting exams, make sure to check out my posts on Tasting and the nailing Quality Assessment here!
Revisit your favorite wines. Which wines were your favorites? Which ones would you be fine with never having again? Kick back with the snacks and the leftover wine and talk about something other than wine.
Plan the theme for the next tasting! If you are studying for a wine exam, you may just be following your course curriculum. If you are just looking to improve your tasting skills, here are some fun ideas we have bounced around for our tasting sessions:
“The Non-Testables” - For those who feel a little burned out preparing for wine exams, having a blind tasting of skin contact wines, rare varietals and other out-of-the-box wines will make you come running back to the testable wines in no time.
“Drinking and Wearing White After Labor Day” and “Groundbreaking Florals for Spring” - Who doesn’t love pairing their wine tastings with coordinated outfits?
“Pizza Wines” - Everyone loves pizza, and it’s bascially an excuse to break out the Lambrusco.
“The Grand Cru Tasting” - There is no joy like bringing out the big guns you have been saving in your cellar for a special end-of-year holiday tasting with your favorite wine friends. Limited use of the spittoon is permitted and completely encouraged for this tasting session.
Do you like blind tasting sessions?
People have a love/hate relationship with blind tastings, but with the right group, they can be some of the most enjoyable and informative wine experiences you can have. Any additional tips you would add for your fellow wine lovers? Comment below!
