From: peter@icad.com (Peter Masters)
Newsgroups: rec.food.drink
Subject: Re: Infos about wine tasting clubs
Date: 11 Sep 92 23:06:25 GMT
Organization: ICAD Inc., Cambridge, MA

In article <9209100834.AA05388@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> bondono@VNET.IBM.COM writes:

   By the way, I'd like to create a tasting club, and wondered about the
   best way to do it:
       frequency of meetings
       how to buy bottles (each member come with a bottle, or one of them
   buys them all, the price being divided)
       how much wines to drink in a session
   and all other things yo can think about.

   Please share your own experiments with the rest of the net!

I have participated in informal tastings with friends for a while now
(like 10 years).  I don't think there are any right or wrong answers
to questions like these, but I'll share my experience.

We always meet on Friday evenings, making it an informal party as well
as a tasting.  This seems to work well when a number of the
participants are fairly new at the game and/or don't consider
themselves too "serious" about wine.  Other tasting groups I know of,
often involving serious wine buffs and people employed in the trade,
usually take place on week nights.

We usually drink 8 to 12 wines, among 12 to 20 people.  More than
about 16 people, and you begin to have trouble getting enough pours
from the bottle; less than 12, and you can't afford enough wines!
This is also a comfortable number for the average member's house.
(I usually try to book about 16 people; usually a few cancel or don't
show up; occasionally a few extra are brought along by members at the
last minute.  It IS important that people keep the host aware of any
changes of plan, so he or she knows how many drinkers to expect, hence
how much wine to open and  how much it will cost.)

Each tasting is at a different member's house.  The host is
responsible for choosing and buying the wine.  I prefer this method,
in general, to the "bring a bottle" approach.  It allows one to plan a
number of different informative styles of tasting, beyond the
"cabernets from $10 to $15" that the other method yields.  One thing
we almost always do is to have two flights, of similar wines, but with
the second flight significantly more expensive.  This allows us to
taste some things we can't really afford to drink very often, as well
as find good values among cheaper wines.  After a number of such
tastings, we have regretfully concluded that you really do get what
you pay for. Another possibility it opens up is the vertical tasting,
with several wines from a single producer, or vinyard; or the same
wine from different years.  One of our most interesting tastings, a
number of years ago, consisted of 4 pairs of wines: Remoissenet Beaune
Greves '70 and '80, Oddero Barolo '71 and '78; Chateau Louviere
(Rouge) '66 and '79; and two vintages of a Chianti Classico whose name
escapes me.  These were chosen based on price and availability, in the
early '80s.  Recently, we did a survey of ports, starting with
standard tawny and ruby blends, and ending with a '77 vintage and '67
single quinta vintage.  Both the last wines cost over $60, but the
cost of the tasting was around $15 per person.  For a German tasting,
it is nice to do a flight of kabinetts, followed by auslesen or other
sweet wines; usually, one can find pairs of wines from the same
producer, and can look for parallels in style.  But you get the idea.

We generally use one glass per taster, and put out a pitcher of water
and a large bowl or two for depositing rinse water and spitting.  If
your tasters are in the "not too serious" camp, they won't spit.  If
so, be careful not to serve TOO much wine.

Peter Masters
peter@icad.com