I was reading another thread where Jeff Leve made the statement, “I am going to be tasting about 600-800 wines from 2019 over the next 10 weeks or so.” For some reason, those numbers struck me - while probably pretty typical for someone in his line of work, when compared to the number of different wines that I taste in a given year, it is quite humbling (yes, Jeff tastes thousands of wines each year so we don’t have to). I am likely at the low end of the spectrum on WB - since I rarely by a single bottle of any wine I am guessing that I open 40-50 unique bottles a year and am currently not participating in any wine dinners or tasting groups. So how many wines does the average Berserker (non-professional wine critic) taste in a given year?
In the last 7 years I have tasted 1800 wines, I.e. about 250 per years.
In 2021 we consumed 243 unique wines, according to CT. But that doesn’t account for having drunk multiple vintages of some of those wines - 5 different vintages of Keller Von der Fels, 4 different vintages of Produttori Barbaresco, for instance - so it’s probably more like 300 if you consider each vintage a unique wine.
That number looks pretty standard over the last few years, but t’s important to note, however, that from year to year, the lists overlap a lot, so I can’t claim we drank 600 different wines over the last two years.
Mine seems to be around 125 to 150 over the past 3 years.
Can’t wait to see Otto respond to this thread.
75 to 100 per year
Since I retired from wine sales I’m down to100 to 150 per year. When I was working retail there were days when we were looking for wines to feature in our holiday mailers that we tasted 100 wines a day for a week or more. I recall tasting 150 cab-based wines over two days or 70 Pinot Grigios on one day. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.
Probably 175-200 for me. Maybe in the 200-225 range some years if I go to a large tasting or two.
With regular tastings starting back up, my line of work, and the wine we consume while dining it’s probably somewhere around the 2,000 a year mark. I probably only take notes on 10% of that however.
May be 800 to 900 per year, monthly tasting round, my own tastings, invitations, annually trip to France, tastings in Austria … and bottles at home …
“tasting” ITB I think I sample maybe 50 wines a week on average. Home consumption is relatively low because of this.
Well Leve is a professional taster, so that makes sense. I think for most of us, the number of wines we taste would be equal to the bottles we open at home, plus any from restaurants, tastings, friends, winery visits, etcetera.
About 100-150 different wines. We drink a bottle every day so multiple bottles of favorites.
Exactly 243 over the past 12 months for wines where I’ve taken notes (maybe 40-50 more where I haven’t), treating different vintages of the same cuvee as distinct. I don’t often buy more than 2-3 bottles of the same wine and love to backfill
Probably 150/yr at home, another 100/yr at tastings & wineries, and 300-500/yr through work. But a lot of that last category isn’t the kind of wine discussed on this board. A lot of white-label/single-run/bulk wine in particular.
Around 400-500 per year, at least in the last 3 years…
Pre-pandemic, I counted for a few years and it was somewhere around 3000 annually. That would involve sometimes tasting a few dozen in a day and sometimes more if I was travelling in wine country. That’s not drinking entire glasses - it’s tasting, which involves spitting and wouldn’t include wine consumed outside the home with friends.
We usually consume somewhere around 250 at home, although this year, since we’ve been staying in a lot more, as of today it’s 431 (holy shit) at home because we’ve only made a handful of winery visits and haven’t been going out much.
used to be thousands. Got my education for more than a decade every Thursday afternoon after surgery sitting in the back at Wine Exchange next to Steve Zanotti, still the greatest palate I’ve ever seen. Reps would bring their wares, we’d taste, and Steve would pontificate. He was brilliant. Now I taste about 200-300 a year. I miss those days.
Just for the record, I was quoting numbers for unique wines. We drink more than a case a year of our house favorites.
Going to a Grand Tasting tonight with 200+ wines so finishing the year as I started, looming at about 750 unique wines a year.
Here to bring down the average - maybe 50 unique bottlings (not counting vintage differential)