One can't separate wine from people. The people who make it, the people who drink it. And the people who pour it at public tastings.
Public wine tastings are inherently heretic. We are supposed to give a wine all of our attention while we are tasting it. But at public tastings attention is hard to come by because the number of wines poses a dilemma.
The dilemma: the ubiquitous element of hastiness as people sip, spit and quickly go on to the next wine, which is already being offered by busy people pouring the wines. We shake hands with a wine and learn its name (maybe). But not much else. After all, time is limited. Four hours for over 170 wines from more than 70 producers. To taste as many as possible cannot be my goal. My goal can only be to taste as thoroughly as it is possible in the rushed atmosphere of a wine trade show. And here comes the importance of the person who happens to pour the wine.
Table Manners
Modesty is recommended when consuming alcohol but is also a desirable quality in a person. All too often men wearing impeccable suits that suggest importance in the trade ostentatiously block a table to discuss numbers. While I patiently wait for my turn, hairy hands holding empty glasses forcefully thrust left and right like harpoons towards the person pouring the wines. Less hairy and more delicately fingered hands smell irritatingly of perfume. It is an atmosphere of business and ignorance not necessarily associated with the romantic subject matter of the tasting itself.
Eventually I end up in the front row and my glass is being filled. But is it? Tasting events should exactly be that: an opportunity to taste - not drink - wines. However, to assess the quality of a wine half a teaspoon of liquid in the glass is not enough to even get just a basic idea of the wine's character and thus does the wine no justice. If I can't taste it then everything is reduced to superficial consumption. And that is not the purpose of a wine tasting.
Sometimes I am being affirmed a bit too often that a wine labeled "trocken" is going to be dry. At a recent trade tasting an American importer of a wine from the Mosel region kept reminding me that "this Riesling is exactly what Americans like about wine" while I was desperately trying to concentrate on the wine itself. I understand that wines need to be sold once they have been produced, but wines sell best if they speak for themselves. What Americans like or dislike is not my concern.
Wines are best presented by the winemaker, rather than by a sales person. The latter's arguments often are disguised conclusions, attractively packaged, to save me the "trouble" of having to assess the wine myself.
When the winemaker is present s/he tells me about a vineyard's soils and its impact on the wine and leaves the conclusion to me. Wine can't be separated from the people. Those who make the wine are the ones who tell the stories we need to know in order to understand a wine better. We tasters should show respect for the wine by not discussing numbers while tasting it. And we should not wear perfume.
I agree on all of your points
Submitted by Lasse Kruse (not verified) on 16 June 2010.
Hi Uwe.
This text tells the truth of a winetasting. not many people take their time to look at the availble wines and figure out a "tour" through the tasting.
It is obvious that it is not possible to taste all the wines in 4 hours or less.. So it is better to figure out which 50 wines or so you want to taste and the way to start and end.
By this way you are not rushing and not convinced by any salesguy that you should taste his wines..
I can be difficult to figure out which wines you should taste first and last, but here it is important to attend the tasting wit a experinced person that can take you through the tasting.
Riesling tasting should start with: Sekt/Sparkling, basic, kabinett, spätlese all dry. Then continue with the fruity wines of the basic, kabinett feinherb/halbtrocken, spätlese feinherb/halbrocken. End with the sweet.Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese BA, Eiswein and TBA.
A lot of people would just taste all the wines at one winery and the move on, but I always tell the WINEMAKER that I will return for the next level, in this way the WINEMAKER will se that I respect his wines and when I return, there should be a bette possibility that he/she will tell me more about his wines, because he can see I am there for the tasting and not drinking.
One other important issue is that, if you taste all the wines from one winery, then it is almost impossible to taste the dry wines at the next winery because you can stil feel and taste the heavy sweet wines from the last winery.
The worst that can happen at a tasting is when some of the wines are poured by the wife of the winery and she has put on too much perfume, that can ruin the whole tasting at this winery. Especially if her importer or saleswoman has done the same! :-)
Thanks for a fantastic webpage.
All the best
Lasse Kruse
www.kronevin.dk
Lasse, thanks for your
Submitted by admin on 16 June 2010.
Lasse, thanks for your comments. I used to first try all the dry wines of those growers which I had selected beforehand, then move on to the off-dry, then sweet wines. But the growing number of visitors at trade tastings makes this almost impossible. At least at the tables of the bigger names there is often a large crowd and I simply don't feel like squeezing my way through the bulk three times.
As much as I agree with you that tasting by dryness/sweetness level makes most sense, I sometimes like to compare a Kabinett (which might be dry) and a Spätlese (which might be sweet) of the same producer directly, especially if they were made from the same vineyard. This gives me a better idea (I hope) about the vineyard itself and also about the winemaker's style (some make better dry wines, some excel at wines with a good amount of RS).
But you are making a good point of showing your respect for the wine (and thus the person who makes it) by returning to their table. And I may have to be even more rigid in the future in regard to the number of wines I plan to taste.
Uwe