How to select wines for your first beginners' wine tasting

As you may have read in my 7 steps to organizing a fabulous wine tasting -to view click here , it's easy to impress your friends with a few tricks and a little preparation.
You don't need to be a wine expert to show off. Trust me, my friends usually rave about my wine tastings for days and I can tell you I still have a LOT to learn.

So here are a few more tricks to make sure that you too are able to enjoy a great wine tasting.

1. The most important thing you do is select simple wines.


No need to go directly for a Romanée Conti just yet. You may settle for a 5 to 15$ bottle which I'm sure you'll appreciate.
What I suggest you should do, is buy one-varietal wines. It's hard enough to try to understand what the characteristics of Merlot are, so don't bother and buy an intricate assemblage wine ; you'd be completely lost (and worst of all, your guests would be lost too!).

2. Try to go for an all white or an all red tasting.


This will ease up a lot your task. First of all, you will only have so much aromas that you may find in these wines. For example, if you select only white wines, don't even bother to find strawberry or mushroom and stay focused on the typical white wine aromas like orange, lemon, pineapple, honey, nut, litchi, rose or pear.

3. Find stereotypical wines

What I mean by that is that should really try to find wines that display the typical aromas you would usually find in their varietal.
For instance, I would start out with a Chenin wine (not the most famous varietal, as it mostly grows in the Loire Valley in France). Chenin is a white wine that has the characteristic of showing very vivid acidity. So you would know, when tasting one that you would be most likely to end of sensing aromas of orange or citrus.
If your guests (or yourself!) have really never tried wine tasting before, it would probably come in handy to have flavors that are easy to recognize.

4. Buy a little bit of bread or neutral food, for people to chew on when they feel their mouth is starting to get numb.

Also I may add, that it could be useful if one of your guests has not have time to eat before. Once I organized a tasting in a rush and didn't have time to have a decent lunch. Well, I can let you guess that although it was very fun (for me at least), I ended up trying to convince my friends that red wine was actually white wine with tomato juice inside. Yeah, surprisingly enough the people I had invited to that specific tasting never really wanted to try it again ...

If you manage to get all this straight, there is no reason why your wine tasting shouldn't be a great success!

As an example here are the wines I tasted for a beginners wine tasting last week (red and white).

Chenin, Domaine de la taille aux loups, 2008
Vouvray

Pinot Noir, Les bons Ores, 2005
Chorey les Beaunes

Syrah, Domaine Gros, 2007
Minervois

Grenache, Syrah, Domaine de la Citadelle, 2003
Cotes du Lubéron

7 steps to organizing a fabulous wine tasting

So now you think you are good enough to deliver your knowledge of wines to others, huh?

You want to please.
You want to share.
You want to impress.
You want to show yourself and your friends that the money you've spent in wine tasting classes has not been totally meaningless.
But the truth is (and I know this because I've lived the exact same thing) you are terrified at the idea that it might just turn wrong.
What if the wines are not good?
What if people get bored?
What if you don't recognize a single aroma?
What if...

So you need some help. And luckily, as I've been there, done that, I can tell you that there are 7 very easy steps to make sure that your wine tasting will be a total hit.
Are you ready? Here we go !


1. Plan at least a week in advance and think about the people you are going to invite.

It may seem dumb, but I can assure you that a last minute wine tasting is never easy to tackle. All the more so if you've planned to drink wines that need to decant... you might just disgust your guests.
So you need to think in advance of whom you want to see at your little event. First of all, don't go for quantity. Having 50 people for a wine tasting may seem fun, but in fact you might end up with too much you can handle. Trust my experience when I tell you that 10 people is just about right if you want to keep good relations with your neighbors. Secondly, tell people in advance. Otherwise you might end up drinking all this wine alone with your cat and your grandma. That would be a pity.


2. Think about the wines you are going to taste in advance.

Yes I know, it's a shame because you will not be able to blind taste like the others. But on the other hand, you'll be very happy to have a little idea of what you SHOULD find in these wines if by any chance you can't smell a damn thing.
So my advice is to sacrifice yourself (I know noble isn't it)and ask your local wine seller if he knows 4 or 5 wines that would be adequate for an introduction to wine tasting.
And then, ASK FOR HINTS ON WHAT TO FIND INSIDE THEM.
If you have the time and feel a little unsure about yourself, you may even look those wines up on the internet to get a little feedback from the experts.


3. Open your wines in advance.

This is really important for red wines. White wines don't need this and should be kept cool until the beginning of the tasting. However remember to open up your reds in advance or you could encounter two hardships:
First, your friends will hate you for serving them something too tannic. All the more so if they have gum issues. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about (sorry granny).
Secondly, don't forget wines evolve with time and oxygen. So if you open your wine right before the first part of the tasting, by the time you get to step 6, the wine will have completely changed and it will ruin everything for you. No I'm not being over-dramatic.





4.(optional but much better) Buy le Nez du vin (if you haven't already done it).

To understand what le Nez du vin is check out my explanatory post "How to drink wine, recognize aromas ... and impress your friends ! ".
What you need to do during your wine tasting session, is begin by a little nostril momentum. You should select a few aromas (about 20) that may be found in the wines you have selected and tell people to sniff the little flasks of le Nez du Vin and try to decipher what smell they convey.
This is actually a very important element of a good wine tasting session. Most people can't make a difference between a strawberry and a banana (with their nose I mean !) so it usually really helps people to focus on their olfactory sense.
I truly believe this is a pivotal moment of a successful wine tasting so don't skip it !

5. Wine tasting per se. Finally.




After your little sniveling game, your friends will pretty thirsty and glad to start drinking. Use proper tasting glasses if you can and take your time taste each wine individual. After each wine, try to pause and have your friends explain what they felt. You should tell them that this part is actually important because there will be a little competition by the end of the wine tasting, and they will have to try to recognize which wine is in which glass.
Give you guests pens and paper so that they can jot down their impressions to try to remember later on what they tasted.


6. To be sure to win your friends over, you have to create emotion.

Competition and the promise of wining a bottle can be a very good way of having people remember your event.
People are like kids. They like to win. They like to have prizes. So you should buy an extra bottle to give it to the person who will recognize the wines you tasted the fastest. I know it sounds childish and stupid, but trust me: it works! People go crazy for a 3$ bottle of wine!

So do a blind tasting with our four wines in four different glasses dubbed 1, 2, 3 and 4. The person who answers the fastest wins the jackpot!
You'll be surprised how hard this game is actually. Most of the time, if you didn't open your wines early enough, they will have oxygenated and changed by the time the game starts. Also, if your friends didn't spit during the preceding tastings they might be having trouble staying focused by now...


7. How not to go bankrupt.

I promise that if you follow these 6 very easy steps, you are pretty sure to have a great time during your wine tasting.
The best thing to do (to avoid thinking about your diminishing bank account during the whole session) is to ask a little compensation (just the amount you paid to get the 5 bottles) to your friends. Try not to by Opus One or Château Margaux on your first try, people might be a little taken aback to pay 800$ for a friendly wine tasting session.

If you follow these simple rules, you'll experience the joy and fun of sharing something you love to do with people you care about. And you won't even get nervous about it.

How to drink wine, recognize aromas ... and impress your friends !

It was a few years ago, in a fancy restaurant in Paris. The sommelier delicately poured a crimson colored wine in my glass. The moment was tantalizing. The beauty of terroir. I leaned forward to taste the wine and tell him it was great. Everyone was looking. Waiting. Expecting me to sigh with ecstasy. So I did, of course.


But it was corked.
And I thought it was just a very heavy smell of mushroom. Or someone's bad cologne. Or my nose. Hell, I didn't have a clue.

Now I'm pretty sure this could happen to anyone who doesn't have any experience in wine tasting. And it's ok. It happens. It would just be a shame for you to spend 200$ on cork juice for your wedding day.
That's why I decided to deliver my experience of and show you with a little "how to" post, precisely HOW TO drink wine, recognize aromas... and impress your friends !

1. The first and most important thing you need to do is train your nostrils.
Nowadays our noses have just about all their core functions. They are meant to smell, whiff, sniff, snivel, inhale, and mostly identify. But that last action takes practice. You need to learn what a food or flower smells like and memorize this scent. It should be a game really. Each time you go out in a garden or stand in your kitchen (or someone elses !) just try to deeply inhale and sniff everything you can get your hands on.
Ok so you may look a little dumb if your friend stumbles upon you with your nose stuck in a jar of mushroom.
But remember one thing, it is for the greater good: you may have lost your dignity, but next time you drink a 10 year-old Burgundy, you'll know there's truffle in there.


2. The second thing you should consider is, well, cheating.
Fumbling around your friends kitchen may be fun once or twice, but what will happen if people start thinking your a kleptomaniac, or a utensil fetishist? There must be another solution.
Well, there is my friends, and I, in my immense generosity, will promptly deliver it to you. It is a well kept secret. The secret to learning quickly how to recognize different scents without loosing all your friends.
Here is my secret weapon to shine in society and impress my friends with my super smelling skills (I know it sounds very sexy):
Le Nez du Vin, by Jean Lenoir.
A kit of 54 aromas captured in little flasks (the basic fragrances you can find in wine)so that you can train your nostrils until they die. I do not work for Mr Lenoir, nor do I have shares in his business, but I still really recommend anyone who wants to learn how to taste wine to buy it.






3. Drink and taste as much as you can.
But mostly don't just drink, take the time to reflect and think about what you are drinking. Why do you like it ? or not ? What aromas are predominant. Do you smell fruits, flowers ?



So next time you sit in a fancy restaurant, and the sommelier comes up to you and asks you to taste, don't be scared, if the wine is corked, you're allowed to say so. Just think about your little flask and try hard to remember if it corresponds to the same smell. Before you know it, it'll come naturally and you won't even have to think about your magic kit !

Sunday afternoon tea

A little bit of sweetness in my world of Chicken and wine.
It can't hurt, and with the dreadful weather we've been having in Paris today, I just felt like hanging around home with a couple of friends.
Hanging around with food of course.

So here's a little improvisation that comes from the Kumquats I found at my local market this morning. I don't usually cook them, there are lovely just like that.

Independent Wine Makers Fair

Twice a year the Independent Wine Makers Fair (Salon des Vignerons Indépendants) takes place in Paris.

It's quite an event, and the occasion for amateur wine connoisseurs like me to discover small estates that are hardly sold on the mainstream wine market.

I went there with a couple of friends to experience the frenzy of tasting wines from 9am to 5 pm in a gigantic garage-like hall that held approximately 1000 wine makers.

We started out spitting our wine, but by 2pm we had completely forgotten all about our spitting cups. So I'm not sure my judgment on the last wines we tasted is totally accurate...

In fact, I realized the following morning that I had bought 3 times as much wine past that time.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is because we got lucky and found the best estates towards the end.