Offline Etiquette

Through this board and live experience, I picked up a few general guidelines for offlines. I’m curious if others either 1) Disagree with any of these or 2) Think I’m missing something. Given the makeup of this board I very much doubt there will be any in category 2 but we’ll see.

1. Have decent hygiene - should be a given but even a little BO can throw off a wine
2. Don’t do other things that stink - not just perfume/cologne but lotions, deodorants, etc
3. Respect the wine - biggest thing here is if you have 5/6 glasses in front of you, remember what’s in each one. Otherwise you’ve got no idea what you’re tasting, which completely defeats the purpose (blind tastings aside)
4. Don’t announce your opinion on a wine until it’s gone around the table - good or bad. Can’t count the number of times a wine has been announced as corked after only 2-3 people, often without unanimity in the pronouncement.
5. Don’t get drunk

If this does happen, puke and rally.

Add: Bring your fair share.

this guy. he gets it.

Yup, if you don’t rally, you can’t end the evening overtly hitting on any attendees that you find alluring.

Kyle, great suggestion.

don’t bring a +1 and only bring one bottle. Unless they are ABSOLUTELY not drinking a single drop, bring two bottles.

6. Try hard to stay in theme
7. Don’t be cheap
8. Bring something interesting

I went to a very specific themed wine gathering once for one specific label of a well known rhone wine. A winery owner (of a label i’ve never heard of) brought a bottle of his own wine for him and his partner. Stated it was similar.

Disagree on 4 (but like the rest). If a bottle is corked, I don’t want it in my glass at all; at least stop it going around and have the discussion.

9. Don’t overpour.

I don’t mind someone announcing a bottle is corked before everyone has tasted it. I’d rather not infect my glass if I’m using it for more than one wine over the course of an evening.

I would discreetly ask the person who brought the wine for a second opinion before the bottle went further down the table, otherwise it would just taint everyone’s glasses with TCA.

Why do you need to discreetly ask at all?

It isn’t their fault the wine is corked…I mean, people do feel bad about it because they weren’t able to share a bottle…but it isn’t like they intentionally brought a corked bottle or had any influence on that so there shouldn’t be any shame involved at all…there is nothing they could’ve done and everyone has had corked bottles…it sucks but it is what it is…

Ah yes, but that assumes it’s actually badly corked, and not just pronounced as such by someone who is hypersensitive to TCA.

On your 9, I will occasionally see people bring breakers or other measurement devices. At first I thought it was dumb but it works pretty well and takes any error out of the process - only issue now is that if we’re splitting a bottle 10 ways, 75ml is still probably more than I’d take but I can solve that on my own.

Along those lines, as a civilian drinker, don’t bring a “ringer” without also bringing what was agreed upon.

I went to a 2005 BDX tasting of RMP 95+ point wines. A wealthy member of the group brought a $30 bottle of crap to try and “test” the blind setting. Did not fly well with the host.

Um yea, I am just down on cheap bastards who show up and try and talk up the bottle of $20 plonk that they have bought along.

+1 on overpouring. We’ve got a guy in our tasting group who consistently gives himself double the volume of everyone else at the table. Often bottles don’t make it around the table and people have to scrounge pours off his glass or others who are feeling generous. When he comes to tastings I always tee it up to have a couple people volunteer to pour the wines for the table for each flight to attempt to mitigate the issue.

Ideally I think that we should only get sample/small pours to taste/assess a wine and attempt to leave as much as possible in bottle for people to come back to it when we have dinner after the tasting. If you want to drop the hammer after we’ve looked at all the wines; no worries. But if you’re pouring yourself a 3x 100ml glasses when we’ve got 10 people at the table in the first flight chances are good you’ll be so lit by the third or fourth flight that you palate will be borderline shot anyway.

This is a general comment:

At tastings, there is a wide spectrum of how people approach them and what experience they seek. One person might want to focus on wines, talk about them, maybe spit, maybe take notes. Another person might just want to drink some tasty wine, get a buzz on, and talk about other stuff. And everywhere in between.

I think many successful groups are more aligned in their expectations, but fairly often you end up with a mix.

Which is totally fine. I just think it’s good for people to understand and to be respectful that others are approaching it differently. No need to act like the more serious guy is one of the uncool kids, or the unserious guy isn’t legit and is just a boozer. There is no reason different people can’t coexist harmoniously at a tasting.

Ditto for a dozen other ways people might be different at a tasting. Wine should bring us together, not divide us apart.

Talk about something besides wine with your fellow guests. Get to know them a bit.

Courtesy & civility. Always. No matter how much you’ve consumed or how obnoxious your neighbor.

Dan Kravitz

Yeah. Like politics maybe, or what are their religious beliefs.