Blind Tasting Wine Courses
We thought a fun way to keep exploring wine and build your wine knowledge would be to offer up different packs available blind, no peaking, to taste at home. You could use these become the next Fred Dame (Famous Sommelier), or just have a kick ass time with friends learning and trying to guess wine around the table.
Erika Sato, a Certified Sommelier, has put together these packs. Some packs will have testable grapes from regions that give the wine very specific traits. Other packs will show the same variety from different regions as we investigate sometimes the dramatic differences in profile of the wine from place to place.
Each pack will include bagged and sealed wine and enveloped information about each wine and the reasoning behind landing on it in a blind setting.
Blind Tasting 103 $90, Tax Included
Blind Tasting 102 $95, Tax Included
Blind Tasting is a skill that combines a number of component skills. It requires developing your palate to recognize characteristics of the wine that come from the grapes, the region/terroir and winemaking techniques and then using deductive techniques based upon the theoretical knowledge of those same factors (grapes, terroir, winemaking).
The Court of Master Sommeliers call it the Deductive Tasting Format. It offers a step-by-step guide to honing blind tasting skills. We can just have fun.
This kit is designed as an introduction to the methodology, and focusses on a few of the wines that should be relatively recognizable. The key is to focus on the characteristics that point to what the wine is – “markers”, if you will, that distinguish the wine and lead you to the final conclusion.
The wines included are all “testable” in the Court of Master Sommeliers certification process, the majority being at level 1 or level 2, but we may throw a few ringers your way. At level 1 or level 2, the key is to be able to pinpoint the grape, and begin to pinpoint the region as well. The deduction process and discussion will mainly be confined to those testable grapes and regions. There are plenty of exceptions based on winemaker choices and a myriad of grapes which can have some of these same characteristics, but including all of those would totally unfair.
Some of the actual “process” of wine characterization is included in our “Wine Characterization” pack. In terms of doing this blind tasting, I would suggest doing the whites together (wines 1-3), and then the reds (wines 4-6). Try to focus on the color, the intensity and type of the aromatics (fruit and floral) as well as any other things that stand out. For example, is there minerality, how much oak, how much tannin, etc.
In a blind tasting, you really need to focus on the things that make the wine unique, not necessarily on simply characterizing the wines. That’s why we suggest doing all the whites together and all the reds together rather than one at a time – this helps you put the things that you might pick up on in context. For example, you may think one wine is quite floral until you smell one of the others, which may be much more intensely floral.
I also suggest that you take the white wines (wines 1-3) out of the refrigerator at least 10-20 minutes ahead of time. You want the wines to be slightly chilled, but not cold, as that can dampen the flavors and aromas. Similarly, I would recommend that the reds (wines 4-6) be opened and breathe. If you have enough glasses, you can pour 1.5-2 oz into the glass and let it sit until you are ready to try it.