Entitling a blog post ‘Why you should do the thing that pays my bills’ might seem a little disingenuous but bear with me here, it’s a post I could have written years ago when I wasn’t even professionally interested in wine. I have a personal attachment to tastings, as they were a key factor in my decision to work in the wine industry. In particular I’m thinking of my first wine tasting, privately arranged with the owner of a wine shop in Barcelona (Bodega Maestrazgo, pictured above),just for myself and a few friends to try something new. I had an absolutely wonderful time and it opened up a world that I never would have glimpsed had I bought the wines separately and drank them at home.
There is something special in the flow of a well organised wine tasting; the sequential changes of style and quality, the narrative of the history, culture and production that allows you to engage with wine in a completely different way and opens your mind to a whole host of questions that you always wanted to know the answer to but never really had the right forum to ask it in. If constructed and executed well, a good wine tasting is always a success and as with all successful events, will be far greater than the sum of its parts. Let’s have a look at the 5 major reasons you should consider going to a wine tasting!
They’re fun:“Wine Tasting” itself actually seems quite a formal name for what is essentially a group of adults sitting/standing around and rotating through a variety of alcoholic drinks. Wine has been trying to throw off the unwelcome mantle as a snobbish and quite uptight drink for a while now and rightly so, wine tastings are really more a group of persons looking to engage with something they love and have a good time whilst doing so. Occasionally there will be a tasting in a more formal format but they tend to be trade related and intended for more commercial interests.
They’re informative: A lot of improvements have been made in educational circles over the last decade or so, particularly with regards to different ways of teaching and learning. When I was at school, you had a book to read and a book to write in with the occasional hand-out as a break in routine. Now it is commonly accepted that people learn with different, and often more hands-on, approaches. What better way to learn something about wine than through a wine tasting? Not only can you interact with the product directly but if your host is knowledgeable you can ask any question you wanted to know, the information is drip-fed to you glass by glass and often there are others in the tasting more knowledgeable than yourself who are happy to share their passion.
They’re social: Wine is often credited with bringing people together and it is certainly true with tastings; get some good wine, nice people and good feeling into a room and you’re going to make friends. People who go to wine tastings are usually there to learn and have fun; I’ve organised hundreds of tastings now and never have I seen or sensed real tension or bad feelings during an event. I can say that I have personally made friends from going to tastings, and I see with Maestrazgo Wine Club in particular that there is a wonderful social scene surrounding it with groups heading off for dinner or more drinks together after an event.
They’re varied: What’s better; to drink 5 bottles of wine for 4 euros a bottle, or to drink 5 glasses of wine that are worth 20 euros a bottle? A time and a place, I know, but one of the main strengths of wine tastings is the chance to try multiple different wines, styles and quality levels for the same price as purchasing a single good bottle of wine. “Variety is the spice of life” — it certainly is for wine! It’s a big world out there and with so many options, broadening your horizon just got a lot easier, and fun, with wine tastings.
They’ll change the way you think about wine: Part of any new experience is the gaining of knowledge and therefore understanding; even in an informal and fun environment you will pick up new facts, opinions and skills. As you gain a basic understanding of wine, you’ll find yourself becoming more adventurous with your choices, appreciating the product in a different way and generally having more fun! At the worst, you will come away having found one or two new wines you really enjoy and some appreciation as to why. At the best, well, you might end up becoming really quite interested, and who knows what that will lead to?