Always telling yourself you want to learn a little more about wine or broaden your wine horizons?  Maybe you’re interested in the difference between Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Grigio and Pinotage?  Learning some basics like understanding the different wine grape varieties, what to expect from different regions and how to read a wine label will enhance your wine experience and enjoyment 100-fold in the coming year.  Not to mention, reading and finally understanding the wine list and recommending options for your friends is satisfying and fun!

If you’re really hard core about wine, you might be interested in studying for a certification and become a Certified Specialist of Wine (CSW), or you may simply be interested in learning about Italian wines one week or Spanish wines the next.  Either way, the Atlanta Wine School is the authority on wine education in the Southeast and offers all types of classes for all levels of expertise.  Click here to see the current courses available and sign up today!  Look for a wine school near you.

Another way to learn more about wine is to attend more wine tastings.  Many restaurants, wine shops and bars offer such an experience and are often themed from month to month.  Here are a couple of favorites in the Atlanta area, but feel free to locate other options at LocalWineEvents.com at any time.

• Join Chris Gaither, the People’s Sommelier, at Parish in Inman Park every other Wednesday.  Chris puts a fun twist on his tastings and is very entertaining.  Yet, he is very serious about wine and you’ll leave dazzled and enthused.  Address: 240 N. Highland Ave., Atlanta, GA  30307 
• Muss & Turners in the Vinings offers a tasting every Tuesday night in a laid back atmosphere.  Ryan Turner himself often hosts these events.  Address: 1675 Cumberland Pkwy, Ste 309, Smyrna, GA 30080 
• Sherlock’s in Brookhaven offers free tastings every Saturday from 3 – 5p.  Address: 4062 Peachtree Road, Atlanta, GA. 30319

Make wine a priority and a source of inspiration for you this coming year.

Cheers!

We are celebrating the start of the third year of our neighborhood wine tasting club.  We call it a wine club, but the fact is we have had tequila and Octoberfest beer tastings as well, so it’s very wide open as to the topic and the main goal is simply to get together with our friends and neighbors and enjoy each other’s company.  Oh, and maybe we learn something new about wine, tequila or beer along the way too. 

One way to meet your resolution to taste more wines this year is to host your own tasting.  We recommend hosting a tasting for anyone looking to try new wines and learn from one another.  It is very easy to do and can be as informal or elaborate as you like.  You can see some examples by going to the Pelly Wine Club pages.

Here are some basics to get started with:

1. Relax and don’t try to be an expert or think you need to be one.  Again, it’s about the company and having a learning and/or drinking experience.

2. Take notes.  Taking notes helps you remember the wines you liked and may want to purchase down the road, especially after tasting a lot of wines, the memory of that evening might get a little blurry.    Don’t worry about what your notes say, but rather use descriptions that you know and will recognize.  If it tastes like blackberries and you like that taste, write that down, but I have never tasted gooseberries or elderberries, so I would never use those terms.  Click below for some examples of tasting note cards (Powerpoint .PPT format):            

Bordeaux

Basic

S Hemi

3. Snacks are a good idea both for counteracting alcohol consumption (we talk about spit and dump buckets below) and palate cleansing between wines.  Some foods can mess with the palate such as spicy sausage or certain cheeses, so stick with plain crackers or bread (i.e. French, but NOT sourdough) if you are just doing a blind tasting and not trying to do pairings with food. Often, we will start our parties at 8pm+ so that participants have a chance to eat dinner or something prior to attending the tasting.

4. Don’t have guests bring wine in their own bags.  The host should bag the wines in identical wrapping (i.e. brown bag) and mark them with letters or numbers so that no one will be able to tell which wine they brought.  Sometimes, it helps to remove the foil on the neck, too.

5. Use a light tablecloth, white paper napkins, or white tasting note cards as this will allow for good background material to note the color of each wine.  Note: this doesn’t matter if you are doing more advanced pure blind tasting using black glasses and you don’t want to be influenced by the hue.

6. If you have guests new to the wine tasting experience, remind them to keep each taste to about 1 – 2 oz. and maybe you can show them about how much that is — we’ve had a few folks get kinda sloshed before reaching the last wine in the tasting and there’s certainly not anything wrong with that at our parties for sure — it makes for great stories.  You can remind everyone that after the tasting, they can pour full glasses of their favorites… in most cases, there is plenty of wine left to do this.

7. We prefer to go around the table or room to share some quick thoughts on each wine before moving onto the next one — sometimes we try to guess the wine and I even get lucky once in awhile.  There is no pressure for anyone to share their thoughts or notes if they don’t want to.  If your party is too large and folks are scattered around or you have multiple “stations” around your living, dining and family rooms, this isn’t possible and can wait until the end of the tasting to share notes.

8. Be sure to have some spit and dump buckets around so that guests can dump their wine if they don’t fancy it, or if they would like to reduce the chance of becoming intoxicated.  Professional tasters never consume and always spit as they taste many wines at one sitting and the effects of consumption can affect your ability to evaluate the wine as the night goes on.  We are a consumption tasting club in which almost everyone is drinking along the way and always continue the party into the late hours.  It’s your choice.  No need to get fancy as we use flower vases, pitchers or pots for this purpose.

9. To score or not to score — if you want to add a little competition to your party, have everyone score each wine from, say 1-5, and give the guests who brought the winning wine a small gift (i.e. corkscrew, wine glass charms, wine book, etc.)

That’s it!  Good luck and happy tasting.

If you are reading this blog, you should have at least one wine-related resolution on your list for 2009:  Taste more wine!  This should go without saying for most of you out there, but in my opinion, 2009 (and possibly 2010) much more wine will be approachable to those of us out there trying to tame our wine budget.  But, beyond the fun and challenging game of trying to find the needle-in-the-haystack ultimate value in the fighting varietals, maybe you’ll expand your horizons to try a premium wine or two in the coming year as I expect prices to come down to something more…ahem… palatable.

One way to expedite this process and do it without spending a lot of that sweet moola you made with Uncle Rico blind-tasting bottles at $7-20 each, is to visit your local wine merchants who offer free or small-fee tastings.  This is a great way to try many different types of wines at different prices to determine if you will like them before you buy them.  As we’ve mentioned a few times before, our favorite place is the Sherlock’s literally half a mile from our house which regularly hosts free tastings for 4-5 wines each Saturday.  Each time we tend to walk away with at least one bottle.

Another place we discovered is a little further away in Winter Park, Florida while we were on holiday but I am expecting we all can soon find a similar place in our own cities.  What was cool about this place, called the Wine Room, was the automatic wine dispensing “robots” called Enomatics.  You put money down on a plastic card (like a credit card) up front and simply walk around the nicely designed cellar/retail space and insert your card into the machines, choose which wine and how much of a taste you want and the amount is deducted from your card automatically.  For $20, you could easily taste up to 10 or 12 wines.  Of course, they also had one robot dedicated to some high-end wines if you wanted to give those a shot at $14-20 a pop… but that’s still less than buying a bottle at $100-200 a piece, no?

Another way to try before you buy, is to take advantage of what is called a “flight” at a wine bar like The Grape or D’ Vine.  A flight is where you can purchase a taste of 3 different wines, in most cases.  Often times, these flights are by theme like varietal, region or simply the owner’s favorite reds, for example.  In any case, it is a great way to compare wines as well and train your palate and improve your sensory evaluation skills.

So, what are you waiting for?  It’s January 2nd… let’s get started!