Tips for Attending a Wine Tasting

Filed in archive Wine Tasting on October 9, 2006

Attending a wine tasting event is a wonderful way to taste a variety of wines without having to spend a ton of money or get totally wasted.

While I admit, I'm not into spitting (girls are taught not to spit!), even though it is an acceptable way to taste wine and you'll find lots of people do it, you can take small sips and still enjoy a wine tasting event without needing someone to pour you into the back seat of your car for the drive home. Of course, it's always a good idea to have a designated driver.

Here's an article with some excellent tips on wine tasting from The Times-Harld Record:

Don't try to taste it all.

"Bill and I have developed a sort of strategy. He prefers red wine over white, so generally I'll taste the whites and he'll taste the reds. If I find something that I think is special, I'll let him know so he can taste just that, and vice versa with the reds," says Debbie.

Try the whites first, starting with champagnes (sparklings).

Then move on to the dry whites (usually sauvignon blanc), more full-bodied whites (like chardonnay), and finish with the sweeter whites (riesling, sherry, dessert wines).

When tasting red wines, start with light-bodied reds (like pinot noir), and work up to the big, full-bodied reds like cabernet sauvignon and petite syrah.

From Tim Free, a wine consultant with Mid Valley Wine and Liquor:

Free says the folks at Mid Valley often attend huge "trade tastings," where they have honed their tasting strategies.

Bring your own glass.

Hosts welcome this, Free says, and you'll get much more out of the wines you sample. "Most retailers don't have the resources to provide good, clean, glass tasting vessels, so most provide only plastic tasting cups of varying degrees of sophistication," he says.

(Our experts say Riedel and Williams-Sonoma both produce excellent tasting glasses.)

Spit out the wine, or sip as little as necessary to evaluate the wine.

"Most stores will provide dump/spit buckets for this purpose. If not, use an extra cup to dump out the excess. Getting rid of extra wine is not wasting it," Free says.