Wine Tasting (Part I)

Last weekend I lead a wine tasting for people from Trish’s work. 18 people, and 8 different wines.

We’ve done this before with people from her office, and most of the people this time were repeats.

Since we’ve done this before we decided to get away from the more common varieties and try to illustrate some interesting stuff that’s a little off the mainstream. Most of the wines we tasted were new to me too, which made leading the tasting interesting.

So, here’s what we did, and some observations of mine:

The plan had us serving a reception wine while people gathered, then a tutored tasting of 3 whites, then 3 reds–obviously with the more hearty wines later in the process.

Finally we wrapped by bringing out a fourth “mystery” red that was of the same variety, and from the same country, as one of the reds from the main tasting. It was kind of a game, for the people to try to match the “mystery” wine to it’s analog from the tasting.

For the reception wine we wanted to use a relatively dry and crisp sparkling wine. I was leaning towards a Cava–a particular style of Spanish sparkling wine, essentially a “Spanish champagne”–just so I could have fun talking about the Parellada, Macabeo, and Xarello grape varieties that normally constitute those wines. (Especially the Macabeo, since it’s also known as Viura–a variety which shows up later on.) We had a recommendation of a particular Cava, the Castellblanch Brut Zero Brut Nature.

I was quite impressed with the Cava–it did everything we wanted as a reception wine, and would work very well anywhere you wanted a dry champagne. It’s really impressive when you realize it runs about $13.50 a bottle here, taxes in… and Nova Scotia is one of the more expensive markets.

For the first wine we selected a local entry. The Domaine de Grand Pré is the best of the local wineries, and they make a New York Muscat (scroll down a bit on their product page to see some details), which is very useful as an illustrative wine in a tasting. Like most New York Muscat’s this one has a very strong bouquet, which is quite distinct from the taste–it makes a great wine for illustrating the difference between bouquet and taste. (It also gives me an excuse to go into the whole vinifera vs lambrusca thing.)

The New York Muscat runs about $15 a bottle, but I’m not sure I would use it for much outside of illustrating the point. It could be consumed on its own, but I don’t see it going with anything but a very light meal. It was great for the tasting though, since New York Muscat isn’t something most people have tried, since it was useful for illustration, and since it was local.

What we really wanted for the second white was the Stoneleigh Sauvignon Blanc, which is a definite favourite in the McLaren household. Sadly, we couldn’t locate a source for it in town on short notice. As a substitute we pulled in the Lincoln Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc, another Kiwi wine, which was highly recommended by the retailer. It was OK, but didn’t stand out–frankly it didn’t live up to the hype, but did display the common sauvignon characteristics, so it was at least useful. At $25/btl, I expect something better than this was.

For the third white we chose a personal favourite of mine, the Marques de Caceres Blanco Crianza. (You can find a detail page for the wine within their site, but it’s a Flash interface, so I can’t link directly to it.)

Lots of wine drinkers know the Rioja region of Spain, which is famous for its heavily-oaked reds, but not nearly as many people have tried the white Riojas. The beauty of white Rioja is that the vintners of Rioja use that same “oak the hell out of it” style to make the whites that they use on the reds. If you take the crisp acidity of a Viura grape, and age it in oak for years, you end up with a very woody, indeed very smokey white wine.

I like to call white Rioja, particularly this one, “the white wine of Scotch drinkers” because people who like an Islay malt will almost definitely appreciate one of these wines. I can open a bottle of this and drink it myself in the course of an evening, no problem.

Of course, this also works well with a tasting, since it’s an uncommon style, and it also helps to teach people what the effect of oaking on a wine is–seeing the extreme case helps establish what the effect of oaking is, which makes it easier to detect and understand in less extreme cases.

The Blanco Crianza runs around $16/btl, and I always keep some around the house.

I’ll continue with the reds and the mystery wine later.