Wine tasting / Wine "Club" - How do you do it?

WINE TALK
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I’ve got a some friends that like wine as well, but we have never done anything “formal” from a wine get together standpoint. If we have a group of friends over, usually some drink beer, some wine (some of our friends drink no wine at all, and there is little hard liquor consumption in my group) but there has never been an organized type of wine get together.

I recall one friend mentioning once that it would be neat to have a wine “club” - so that is what I’m asking about. This would likely exclude some of our non-wine friend group on those nights - but I think that is okay. I realize there are likely a lot of ways of doing this - but how do you guys actually do this? I’m not looking for theoretical responses, but real experienced based ones. I would think that if we got together every 2-3 months, maybe the host would get to declare the theme. We are mostly red (France/California) drinkers, but I think most would be open to exploring other areas. I don’t want to seem pretentious (which is easy to do with wine) but I do think it would be nice to have them at least a LITTLE educational aspect (say have the host gives a couple minute presentation on the night’s theme) but I don’t know if that is interesting to all. Blinded, specific region, horizontal/verticals, etc. I don’t think it has to be the same theme every time. Do you have the host announce the theme, and ask everyone to bring something appropriate for that? Do you have the host provide everything (which in a rotation, would end up “evening out”)

Just looking for ideas, before I float the concept more concretely. Thanks!

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We rotate among someone being the host and organizing the theme. Pre pandemic we met at a room at one of the local wine storage places, so we would all bring a dish of food, which could range from store-bought pizza to fancy home cooking. We usually have everyone bring a bottle – though often people bring more. I would say personally I sometimes wish there were fewer bottles and wine and thus more opportunity to concentrate on the theme wines. Though some of the extra wines are pre-func – so nice bubbles or an interesting white.

We have not done the educational talk much (I think once or twice). I think it can be quite informative, and would just caution against it getting too lengthy.

The biggest educational part is tasting blind. Often we are double blind – i,e, we know the region or grape or other theme, but do not know the specific wines. That can be quite humbling and educational. We have done some verticals and horizontals – those tend not to be blind (though I think I hosted a blind double horizontal – i.e. two different years of Cayuse syrahs).

If I were going to distill what I think works best – it would be having one person choose the theme. Then members can offer bottles and the host can choose the ones that fit well. I would make clear that others should not feel bad not bringing a wine (thus to try to discourage too much wine!). And I would recommend at least single, if not double, blind.

At the end of the day though, it is a lot of fun no matter what. We have a good group of people; pretty laid back and generous. Much more inquisitive than competitive!

3

My parents are part of a wine club, but this has stopped due to covid. Everyone there is a wine lover, but there is another group that is mostly a dinner group focused with wine. I think this could be the route to go if you want to socialize with non-wine drinkers. The non-wine drinkers can also be in charge of filling up everyone’s glasses :wink:

I think the key would be the have a wine + another part… whether it’s dinner, game night, or heck combine it with a book club. Wine can be the cherry on top.

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I am part of a dinner club consisting of four couples that dine together once a month. Occasionally we organize the evening as a wine tasting party. Many years ago I found an article in Sunset magazine that suggested giving everyone a piece of 8 1/2 x 11 paper on which four circles are drawn about the size of a wine glass. The circles are then labeled A, B, C, D. Everyone is also given four glasses. Four bottles of wine then produced, either by the host or by each person bringing a bottle. Someone is given the job of concealing the identity of the wines and labeling them A, B, C, D. Then the wines are poured, and dinner is served. This method allows each diner to taste all four wines throughout the meal. At the end of the meal, everyone comments on the wines, either from memory or from notes they took during the meal. We have used this technique several times, and each time we have done this it has been a very entertaining evening. It could also be done on a non-blind basis.
Phil Jones

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We’d pick a theme. Hosts would rotate houses and provide heavy apps. Everyone brought two bottles that addressed the theme and had to introduce them. Competition or blind tastings with a winner were fun. A price cap was set. Generally it digressed into a party. We did it every month, which got a little old after awhile. After a few years, you sort of run out of themes.

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How on earth? I’ve been doing tastings for 7 year and I’ve yet to run out of themes. During this covid period I’ve been limiting my tastings this year - 5 or 6 held thus far - but before covid I had tastings up to 2-3 times per month, normally at least once per month. Running out of tasting themes sounds simply impossible to me.

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You have to take into account your audience. Not everyone is as into wine as we are here. A neighborhood group isn’t going to geek out over comparing wines with different whole cluster percentages in Syrah for example. Once you get past all the varietals, regions, pitting region against region, food pairings, dry, off dry, semi sweet, sweet, etc… doing it for a period of 5 years, 12 times a year… folks were starting to have themes centered around label images and the like. It gets old.

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We’ve been doing this for 20 years or a bit more. Roughly 20-22 people in the “club”. Each month (except for pandemic time) someone hosts up to 16 of us. The host picks the varietal or wine type, each couple brings a bottle in a brown paper bag. We randomly number the bags and do a blind tasting. Each couple has eight glasses (or each person if you are so inclined) so you can easily compare the wines. We then make comments and score the wines. After that, the host provides dinner.

Have we repeated themes - sure. But if you do cabs every few years that’s fine with us.

9

I ran a pretty large tasting group in the Bay Area for years. We used an email distribution list (Yahoo at the time), and while we had over 150 members, you’d typically get <20 at any given tasting. We’d meet roughly once/month for themed tastings (nope, never short on themes, but this wasn’t a casual group, these are all wine geeks). We’d rotate between people’s homes, someone would always volunteer to host, and everyone would bring a appetizer to share. We later expanded to do holiday events, dinners, etc. Was great fun, and a lot of long term friendships were formed as a result.

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Maybe I’m missing the point, but how is doing a “repeat” of, let’s say, Oregon vs Sonoma Coast Pinot, every 5 years a bad thing? There are so many things that change in 5 years, 5 new vintages to explore, different producers etc etc…in my mind there is no way you run out of wines to do themed tastings with and a tasting group is being way too close-minded if they consider that once they’ve done a Pinot tasting they’ve explored that topic completely and can’t go back to it.

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run out of themes? Not allowed to repeat? Even years later when the wines have matured and changed? I’ve had one theme for decades—Burgundy—and never run out of permutations.

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Ok you’re right. I am wrong. It’s my experience. Go create yours and see how it turns out.

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Back to my point about not everyone being a geek….
I also never said anything about not allowing to repeat.

You guys are tiring after awhile. Geez.

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One member of our wine group hates themes, so periodically we do a no theme night. Fun to do it blind. It does give one a chance to bring and share some serious wines that just don’t fit into the regular themes that are usually chosen.

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I think it really depends on what the participants are interested in and what kinds of cellars they have.

My favorite wine dinners are tasting menus with a wide variety of wines, with no theme other than terrific, fully mature wines. I tend to do these at a local restaurant that offers a tasting menu anyway and has shown a willingness to work with us to customize one for our wines. An example here would be one bubbly, one or two whites, four or five reds, and a dessert wine - 8 wines total with an 8-course dinner, for 6-8 people. Again, no theme, so the reds could be one Burg, one Brunello, one Rioja, and one Napa Cab, or whatever - with the dishes (small portions, obviously) chosen to match the wines. You can have each person provide one bottle (coordinating so you have the right number of bubbles, white, red, and dessert) or take turns letting the “host” bring them all. These are great for groups of experienced drinkers with deep mature cellars - and they can be great for tasting wines the members aren’t that familiar with if you follow the “everyone brings a bottle” approach and your group has folks with different cellar foci.

I’ve done plenty of others where the theme is pretty narrow and the purpose is more comparison. So for example one theme could be a check in on 2010 Bordeaux and you could do flights by commune or the like. These again are better for more hardcore geeks who would be interested in things like how the right bank 2010s are doing compared to the left bank 2010s.

I’ve done others where it’s a much looser theme and everyone brings a bottle. “Wines you like with BBQ,” “Pinot Noir from anywhere,” “wines from unusual varieties,” etc. These are better when there are more beginners in your group or you just want a more casual approach.

If you’re really looking for more education and have a lot of beginner members who, maybe, have never had an Italian wine or a chardonnay wine from anywhere other than California, etc., and don’t have deep cellars, I’d suggest (though I haven’t done this one) more formal themes focused on relatively inexpensive and newly-released wines. Members could suggest various topics they are interested in learning about and you could rotate host duties. So one might be Italian reds and the host would bring several representative wines from the major regions of Italy, another could be Cabernet-based wines from around the world, etc. This would be a great way to approach it, IMO, for maybe a dozen tastings over 2-4 years, at which point the group may want to ditch the “wine 101” format and move to something more serious. Once folks have developed a sense for what they like and once they’ve built up cellars, they’ll be less interested in these “intro” tastings but for newbies I think they’d be invaluable.

Of course, you can also just rotate hosts and let the host do whatever theme or lack of theme the host wants to do, with the host providing all the wines for that evening. The host with the varied mature cellar could throw a dinner like the tasting menu I suggested first. The host with the deep Bordeaux cellar but little else could throw a dinner like the “2010 Bdx in flights by commune” I suggested second, etc. That allows each host to play to the strengths of his or her cellar.