Tasting Theme Ideas?

I'm worn out from travel and my creativity is at a low ebb. We're hosting a wine tasting this Saturday and there has been interest expressed in tasting blind this time. We will likely number no more than six, ranging from advanced beginner to relatively experience tasters. Each person is to bring a bottle (usually two) in the $15 to $35 range which matches the theme. Food will be simple deli meats and cheeses. Any thoughts on a central theme would be appreciated.

Thank You,

What has your group done for themes lately, Sam?

Sam
If they're bringing two each, how about 1 cheap / 1 more expensive and the group have to guess which is which.

Otherwise, people are asked to bring a wine (or two) they really like and everyone can attempt to match the wine to the person.

Failing that, it doesn't need to have a theme (though for blind tasting I recognise it probably does). Why not an open tasting with no theme to make a change?

regards

Ian

Sam,
If you guys haven't done it recently perhaps an Oregon Pinot theme. That should give you a good selection at your price point. If you have enough bottles/participants, perhaps a shoot out between the Oregon Pinots and Pinot from Central Coast or RRV?
Bill

how about everyone bring wines from grapes or regions that they have never had before. could be fun.

Sam,

We recently did a New World / Old World comparison. The hosts purchased the wines and everyone split the cost. But you could set it up where people brought each in.
But we tasted all of the following blind and tried to guess varietal, new world or old world etc...

NZ Sauv. Blanc / Sancerre

Oregon Pinot Noir / Burgundy

Calif Bordeaux varietal blend / Bordeuax

Shiraz / Syrah

It was lot of fun. Bllind tastings...the great equalizer, LOL.

Richard

What has your group done for themes lately, Sam?

I should have mentioned that in my orginal message. Our last three themes, in reverse order, were: Anything Tuscan, Pinot Battle: West Coast vs. France, and Non-California Chard. We usually don't do them blind though. Thanks for all the great ideas so far. We have covered some Pinots recently, so we probably won't go that way this time, but the "old world/new world" and the "less vs. more expensive" style comparison would be both educational and interesting.

Thanks Again,

We tend to like tastings with both white and red wine. Recommend you pick a region that has a good choice of both and have people bring one of each. Some recommendations: Southern Burgundy, Northern Burgundy, New Zealand, Washington State, Collio/Friuli, and many others.

How about assorted sparklers? You can get some good cava or prosecco on the lower-mid end and decent NV champagne on the upper end of your limit.

Sam, I've done four or five tastings of Andrea Robinson's Big Six wines based on her DVD and her book. People have always enjoyed them, and the blind tasting was a great success. Here is her current list from the DVD -- I have other lists from her course last month if this approach appeals -- three different price levels:

Beringer Johannisberg Riesling, California;
Robert Mondavi Fume Blanc, Napa Valley;
Gallo of Sonoma Chardonnay, Sonoma;
Buena Vista Carneros Pinot Noir, Carneros;
Franciscan Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley;
Jaboulet Crozes-Hermitage, Rhone, France.

Regards, Bob

On my mind recently, syrah-based wines: CA, France, Australia, or comparisons within those countries.

Similarly, grenache based wines, France vs. Spain.

Oh, and the dizzying array of German vineyards and pradikat levels should provide plenty of options for structured riesling tastings.

Rahsaan,

I have assembled examples of Kab, Spat, Aus, and BA Rieslings that I plan to use for a tasting at some point. I would like to do them in the summer and I'm not sure they will work very well for a blind tasting. Frankly, I'm not a big fan of blind tasting anyway.

Thanks

I've done four or five tastings of Andrea Robinson's Big Six wines

Bob,

That would be handy as I already have three of those wines; the Mondavi, the Franciscan and the Jaboulet. Does she say what is the teaching element with those 6 wines?

Sam, the Big Six is a basic Robinson approach -- you see it described in her book and in her DVDs. Following are my rough notes from the intensive course I took with her at the French Culinary Institute a few weeks ago. I plan to post them here when I've got them right, but here as a working draft are notes covering the first hour and a half or so of her course which captures the essence of the teaching approach:

Andrea Robinson General Approach

Taste your way to expertise -- the only way to learn.

The tasting tool box:

Body Styles
Light Bodied
Medium Bodied
Full Bodied

Big Six Grapes
Riesling
Sauvignon Blanc
Chardonnay
Pinot Noir
Merlot/Cabernet Sauvignon
Syrah/Shiraz

Flavor Words
Dry
Crisp
Oaky
Tannic

Over time you will add other words, many of which will somewhat vague; the Toolbox is a foundation.

Learn to taste

Look -- beautiful, shimmers with colors, look against a white background. White wines darken and turn brown as they age; red wines lighten and turn brown as they age. Cause: oxidation -- oxidation causes loss of fruit (like an apple). In young wines, these are the colors to look for:

White
Pale yellow green
Straw yellow
Yellow/gold

Red
Dark pinkish-red
Ruby red
Inky, dark purple

Is the wine light, medium or full. Generally, the darker the color, the fuller bodied the wine. Look down from the top to judge the differences in color.

Swirl the wine around in the glass to vaporize the alcohol. The air borne vapors carry the scent of the wine to your nose. You can taste only four [or five] flavors, but you can smell thousands of scents. The tongue senses temperature, perceives texture or mouth feel. We taste on our tongues; we find flavor through scent. Practice swirling until it is second nature.

Smell the wine. Swirl. Periodically swirl the wine as the alcohol rises. Identify whatever scents you can; experience will teach you additonal scents. Scents can unleash intense emotions and memories.

Taste the wine; take a mouthful and hold it there; swish it around -- it's not elegant but it is very revealing:

Body and texture -- richness and fullness of red wine; lightness and bubles of sparklers.

Taste -- sweetness on the tip of the tongue, bitterness on the back of the tongue; acidity on the sides of the tongue -- a bit tingly and makes your mouth water.

Flavor -- Heat in your mouth sends aromas to your smell center -- identify those you can find.

Balance -- Overall impression -- do all the components -- body, texture, flavors, sweetness, bitterness and acidity -- seem in harmony, seem pleasant?

Quality -- Did you like it? Did the flavor persist in a pleasant way. Did you like it. How much -- nice or wow.

Wine notes: take simple wine notes at first -- avoid being too specific or subjective at the beginning. Add details over time -- walk before you run.

The approach works; Robinson has taught her approach to thousands of people -- restaurant guests, sommeliers, chefs, waiters, bartenders, in a wide variety of restaurants and bars. "The light goes on every time."

The Big Six Wine Grapes -- 80% of all quality wine sold in the US. Great examples can be grown consistently in almost every great wine region in the world. And each can be made in a variety of styles -- these are the wine toddler's basic wines.

White
Riesling -- REES-ling, not RISE-ling.
Sauvignon Blanc -- Sow-veen-yone BLAHNK
Chardonnay -- Shahr-duh-NAY

Red
Pinot Noir -- PEE-no NWAHR
Merlot -- Murr-LOW or Mare-LOW -- your choice -- and Cabernet Sauvignon -- Cab-uhr-NAY Sow-veen-YONE
Syrah (aka Shiraz) -- see-RAW

Tasting the Big Six

Each has a distinctive varietal tastes (in many variations).

Body -- a textual sensation -- weight, richness, thickness in the mouth.
-- skim milk -- watery, runny, skimpy, short taste -- light bodied.
-- whole milk -- thicker, richer, coats your mouth a bit, longer taste -- medium bodied.
-- heavy cream -- dense, thick, clings to your mouth, flavor hangs on -- full bodied.
Important concept in wine; easy to teach; and you can see the difference as well as sense it in the mouth.

Light Riesling Pinot Noir
Medium Savignon Blanc Merlot/Cabernet Sauvignon
Full Chadonnay Syrah/Shiraz

Tastings

1. Taste all six at once -- Complete Wine Course DVD demonstrates. Works perhaps best -- good with novices and experts.

2. Taste only whites in one sitting; reds in another. Works fine too.

Taste about an ounce to an ounce and a half = average glass in a restaurant setting.
Use a spit bucket or any opaque cup.

Steps:

1. Buy your wines -- Robinson has several suggestions at different price points. She urges that you buy all six at the same price point: everyday, moderate and splurge.

2. Set up six glasses on numbered paper with the names of the wines: 1 Riesling, 2 Sauvignon Blanc, 3 Chardonnay, 4 Pinot Noir, 5 Merlot/Cabernet Sauvignon, 6 Syrah/Shiraz.

3. Pour one ounce in the numbered order -- you can go back and have more of any wine you like.

4. Taste the wines in number order.

Riesling -- pale yellow green, mouth watering, refreshing light white wine -- if you pronounce it correctly -- REES-ling -- you have to smile when you say it. Many styles: Germany -- lightest body; Austria and Alsace -- tangiest flavor; California and Washington -- strongest flavor.

Sauvignon Blanc -- great every day wine, ten dollars, match many foods, usually medium bodied. Straw yellow, a little darker than the Riesling, distinctive aroma with lots of punch. Compare with the Riesling -- they are two entirely different aromas. Robinson recommends a wide range of styles from many countries. Try a variety if you like the taste.

Chadonnay -- Darker yellow-gold, full bodied aroma with lots of fruit. Richest, heaviest, best selling white in the US.

Pinot Noir -- Robinson's favorite red -- red wine flavor; white wine texture -- soft, not heavy. Feels like silk in the mouth, lightest red. Look down from the top of the glass against a white background -- you can see through it. Fragrance and flavor are subtle but seductive, luring you back to the glass.

Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon -- Top selling red varietal wine by far. Grow everywhere, good wines at every price point, consistent. Dark, inky, dark and medium to full body. Scent is stronger and more intense than Pinot Noir. Perhaps over powering for some people.

Syrah/Shiraz -- Syrah is a French classic; Shiraz the Australian version made it a major wine during the past ten years. Easy prices and vibrant flavors. Usually full bodied and dark and purple when young -- scent and flavor are big and saturated.

5. Practice, practice, practice. Lots of fun and you will learn something new every time. Robinson repeats the exercise with her waiters several times a year.

Putting flavors into words -- the most important tool is the cork screw, but ...

Four key words occur over and over again: dry, crisp, oaky and tannic. Examples come up again and again; here is a brief overview of each word. Note: fruity is not a key word because the definition varies from person to person; the concept is discussed in another section later in this presentation.

Dry -- for Robinson this word is the most frustrating; it is used in confusing ways, and very different ways for different beverages. A dry wine is one without sweetness but not one without fruitiness; a dry beer is one with slightly higher alcohol a smoother mouth feel; a dry Champagne is slightly sweet ("sec"). But, since she has to, a "dry wine means without residual sugar (left over) because in the winemaking process fermentation usually turns all the sugar in ripe grapes into alcohol. Most of the Big Six are technically dry wines. Wines with residual sugar are usually made that way to achieve a specific style:

Slightly sweet (off-dry): white zinfandel or German Riesling Kabinett.
Medium sweet: Italian Moscato d'Asti or German Spätlese and Auslese.
Very sweet: dessert wines like Port or Sauternes.

Lack of residual sugar is the winemaker's definition of dry, but it also applies to the taster. From the taster's point of view, dry is the opposite of sweet. For your tongue to taste sweetness, sugar must be present. In a dry wine, there is no perceptible sugar and thus no sweetness. Two things determine the sweetness of wine: grapes and winemaking.

Ripeness of the grapes are at harvest; normally ripe grapes normally make a dry wine because all of the sugar is converted to alcohol; overripe grapes can make a slightly sweet to a very sweet wine because not all of the sugar is converted to alcohol. Raisined grapes produce a very sweet wine because much of the water is evaporated. Finally, a mold called botrytis (bo-TRY-tiss) creates a very sweet wine (e.g. Sauterne where the mold is called pourriture noble, or noble rot).

Winemaking -- can control sweetness by stopping fermentation by lowering temperatures or increasing alcohol. The first method is used for wines with light to medium sweetness like white Zinfandel or Asti Spumante. Adding alcohol or fortifying it can add sweetness.

Crisp or crispy -- tingle, tang, tartness, zing and liveliness of acidity in wine. Very good to have in balance with other components of wine. Acidity depends on two factors: the grape and where the grapes are grown. White grapes and wines generally have more acidity than red grapes and wines; Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc grapes generally have more acidity than Chardonnay. Cooler wine regions tend to produce wines with more acidity; warmer areas produce less acidity -- as grapes ripen, acid levels fall and sugar levels rise. Acid wines taste sharper but also have a somewhat different texture:

low acidity -- soft, plump, smooth feeling in the mouth.
high acidity or crip -- an electrical charge -- tangy, tingly, mouthwatering -- the pucker from a squeeze of lemon.

[Note: the foregoing is a very rough first draft of the first hour or so of a very intensive wine course put on by Andrea Robinson at the French Culinary Institue. I plan to re-write after my notes for the whole course are typed up.]

Sam, Robinson gives 10 to 20 makers of each of the Big Six wines in three different price categories: Every day, Moderate and Splurge. I don't have time to type them all up tonight but would be glad to fax you the three pages if it would be helpful. Send me an email at robcurtross@hotmail.com with a fax number if you want it.

I'll check her website, it's possible she has the more comprehensive list there.

***

Nope, not there. Give me a price point Sam, and I'll type up her suggestions.

Regards, Bob

The 'precis' you gave from Andrea Robinson's course is interesting, Bob.

I do somewhat the same thing, with some key differences, but I think our approach is very similar.

I've always thought that some of the introductory classes for wine (and even some of the intermediate classes for amateurs and professionals) are ineffective, so I created a program I called "Taste & Compare", and have used it successfully for some years now.

Depending on the audience, I will arrange from 8 to 16 wines, all carefully selected. An important point is that I tell my people to begin tasting, in silence, for the first few minutes. But the key is they don't know what the wines are. They have no clue, except for half being red and half being white.

What I then reveal, selectively, over time, with much method to my madness, is a series of paired varieties.

If you select appropriately, you can focus on the wines from a varietal perspective at first, then shift your focus to the basic elements of taste (acid, sugar, tannin, alcohol, body/intensity, etc.), then shift again to Old Word vs. New World iterations, or Warm Climate/Cold Climate. Then you can approach the Three Elements That Determine a Wine's Style (that's the advanced class though). Finally, if you're really serious, you can also extend the lesson out to a lunch where you explore food and wine pairing basics.

One thing I love about this is that you can (and should, at the beginning) use exactly the same wines over and over again! Each time the tasters go back to the wines, they experience different facets of the wines.

The basis for this is simple: when you approach a battery of wines, the best way to define an individual wine is sometimes to compare it with others.

Which is more informative to a wine beginner, having him/her taste a series of six different chardonnays to show him what chardonnay is, or to have him taste six different wines, including Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chardonnay, with each pair of varieties selected to represent two different styles of the variety, or two different places. The taster can then define the essence of chardonnay by comparing it to the riesling and sauvignon blanc. I think the second approach is much more valuable, especially when you can then reinforce the learning experience by having them go back to each wine again and again to determine their characteristics.


Every time I have used this approach to wine education, it's been not only fun to teach, but fun for the participants as well. And that's because the participants teach themselves, with their own noses, their own mouths, and their own brains! I'm just there to nudge them into the right learning paths; to put the wines in front of them so they can make their own comparisons.

Very interesting, Hoke. As usual, I'm going to have to think about the key differences between the two approaches.

One first impression observation -- your approach seems to be designed to teach people to learn about wine for themselves.

Robinson's approach seems to be to designed to teach waiter staff, bar tenders, food and wine employees about wine so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Someone who wants to be a good waiter, but strongly prefers beer or harder stuff, might gain a great deal from the Robinson approach. I'm not so sure that's true about your approach.

I'm not arguing that one or the other approaches is better -- just that one is very results oriented, the other more personal enjoyment oriented.

***

Both you and Robinson seem to share a great joy in teaching people about wine. She claims to teach this approach to thousands of people every year, but she was totally engrossed in demonstrating the process -- seven separate times over the three day course. Each time she came to it fresh -- and on the last day, actually ran over because she was having so much fun.

I'll certainly try your approach and see how it goes. I've tried Robinson's six times on my own, and seven times with her -- time for an old dog to see if he is more than a one trick pony -- or something like that. :)

Thanks for explaining your approach so well, Hoke; I appreciate it.

Regards, Bob

Robinson's approach seems to be to designed to teach waiter staff, bar tenders, food and wine employees about wine so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Someone who wants to be a good waiter, but strongly prefers beer or harder stuff, might gain a great deal from the Robinson approach. I'm not so sure that's true about your approach.

Well, yes and no, Bob. I designed the program the way I did so that it would (at least attempt) to accomplish either. I most often use it for wine enthusiasts, but I've also used it numerous times for professionals at the entry level.

Since it is at least partly based on the philosphies of Tim Hanni and his "Progressive Wine List" approach, with which I I know you are familiar, it helps the novice waitstaff to develop their own taste parameters (what is a sauvignon blanc? what is a chardonnay? What range does chardonnay include?), and then be able to respond intelligently to the customer.

For instance, if the waitstaff knows that Sauvignon Blancs tend to be crisper and leaner and more volatile (higher acid, more aromatic, usually without oak influence), and Chardonnays tend to be less aromatic, less acidic, and more full-bodied as a general rule, that will help them make a suggestion to the diner based one what he is eating.

Likewise, if they understand that within the category of Chardonnay there is a range of styles/flavors/characteristics, then they can more intelligently choose a Chardonnay to fit the diner's preferences (Oaky, buttery, fat or lean, taut and unwooded?)

The Taste & Compare program is designed so that it can be twisted and tweaked to the audience. It has been used for supplier training, distributor training, restaurant training, and even has been adopted to train folks at Army and Air Force Exchanges (the military stores and clubs around the world) internationally. And yes, lots of budding wine enthusiasts too. That's the beauty of it: it is really a basic template, a platform, which any given instructor can use. And like any template, it allows the instructor to infuse the learning experience with their own style and flash!

The one major drawback is that it takes a hell of a lot of glassware. Like when I did it for 73 people, at 16 glasses per person.

Thanks to everyone for all of the great comments. I think that I am going to go with the multiple grape variety approach and use it more as a learning experience. We can taste blind if it will make people feel better. The styles I plan are to include are:

Whites:
German Riesling (Prum)
Chablis (Cote de Lechet)
New Zealand Sauv Blanc (Crawford)

Reds:
Oregon Pinot (Argyle Nuthouse)
California Cab (?)
CdP (Domaine Du Vieux Lazaret)

I have the wines listed in parentheses. Other tasters may have different/better wines to contribute in a particular style category. I can't decide which Cab to throw in, and I am only including the CdP because I've been wanting to open it for about 6 months now. We are in the embrace of CdP weather at present as well. Recommendations for tweaks in style, or wine are welcome.

Thanks Again,