A fun way to taste a lot of wine and learn about it quickly! (From the Food & Wine Magazine blog Mouthing Off.)
1. Pick a region and grape you want to explore (Washington state Merlot, for example).
2. Invite a bunch of friends over and tell them to bring a bottle of Washington Merlot of their choosing. Some friends will bring cheap plonk, others will splurge-to-impress. Let them.
3. When your friends arrive, conceal the identity of their wines with paper bags or (clean) socks with the toes cut out. (I actually know somebody who does this.) Then number each of the wines at random. This is called a “single-blind” tasting. (“Double-blind” tastings involve sugar pills and electric shocks and aren’t very fun.)
4. Drink, pass, talk. Foster a shame-free, open-discussion environment, and compare your perceptions and opinions with the group’s. Take plenty of notes—or at least pretend to. As soon as everyone’s comfortable using their wine words, make up a few outrageous aromas and flavors and see which suckers agree with you (“high mesa dew” and “burnt gummy bears” have worked for me).
5. Unveil the bottles and drink again. Notice how quickly opinions change when you realize you liked the $6 bottle bearing a cute aardvark better before it was unmasked. Admit this to no one.
This is how many pros taste and evaluate wine (minus the socks), because it works: Sampling many wines of the same place and grape in one sitting helps you notice similarities and differences that would be harder to notice over months of drinking one bottle at a time. And you only have to buy one bottle a week.
Enjoy!
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