Wine Club

One of the fun parts of being a winemaker is being a critic of wines. By gaining first hand experience making wine, you also gain a little extra perspective. It's now your duty to critically evaluate your own wine and eventually this starts to bleed out into other wines you try and comparison is inevitable.

Up until this point in my life, I've been a rather uncritical consumer of wines. There have been bottles I like and seek out again and wines I avoid after experiencing, but my evaluations have been haphazard and definitely focus on the wines I can afford (read: the bottom tier of the wine pricing spectrum). I'll occasionally do a swirl and check the nose of the wine or eye the color in the glass, when the snob in me wants to make itself known, but beyond the odd moment of showiness I haven't put much effort into learning more about wines.

When it comes to beer brewing I have few making the occasional batch that is subpar, since I'll probably be the one drinking most of it and I can always go back next week and give it another shot (though I do love a good beer...). My winemaking efforts involve a few more people and a much greater quantity, so the quality of the final product has more riding on it. Plus if your batch gets messed up, you're SOL until the next harvest rolls around. And the ingredients cost a little more.

So before I can be sure I'm making good wine I need to hone my tasting skills. To do this I'm making a concerted effort to develop my wine palate. One means that Sara and I stumbled upon to attend meetings with the wine club that a few of our friends in Sacramento are part of. We went to our first meeting last night and received quite an education.

The wine club is sort of like a book club, for wines. Each meeting has a theme tying the wines together, last night's was Barbera. The meeting featured blind pourings, followed by scored evaluations of appearance, aroma, taste, aftertaste and an overall score. The score cards included the infamous flavor wheel and provided some guidance for the uninitiated. After all that there's a reveal and people's scores are added up. Then people finish the remaining wine and can compare and discuss the wines tasted.

After starting out conservative with my scores, I started to come into my own and identify things I did and did not enjoy in the wines. The biggest help was tasting several Barbera wines in quick succession. It allowed for comparison and interpretation of their differences that wouldn't be possible if those tastings were spread out over several evenings or interspersed with other varietals. I also enjoyed the effort all the participants made to avoid talking about the scoring until after the wines had been tasted. It forced tasters to dig down and try and place the flavors that were present in the wine. This was especially noticeable when one of the participants blurted out canned green beans and for the rest of the tasting that's all I could get out of that one Barbera. I'll chalk that up to either the power of suggestion or the fact that she did nail the flavor.

Since Sara and I enjoyed the experience, we're signing up for more and hope to try to do it once a month. Hopefully we'll gain a little education in wine and develop our tastes along the way.