Wine to me is passion. It’s family and friends. It’s warmth of heart and generosity of spirit – Robert Mondavi
I just came in from a delightful walk with Rubi; my collar wasn’t zipped up tight under my chin, I wore sneakers instead of boots and the sun was shinning bright! Tomorrow is the First Day of Spring! There is hope. But I need more – I need a mini celebration, A Wine Tasting and I always turn to my wine tasting tutorial book.
So I’m planning this season’s first gathering of the 2010 Club, a Wine Tasting / Get-Together I started a few years ago. I’m thinking May so we can (hopefully) do our Tasting alfresco.
One November afternoon in 2010 , I was cruising the aisles of Barnes & Noble, a favorite pastime, browsing through books looking for nothing in particular. I like to wander through the stacks picking up interesting titles, flipping through the pages, reading a line or two to see if anything catches my interest.
One book did: a colorful paperback by Maureen Christian Petrosky simply entitled The Wine Club.
An idea formed in my mind and I bought several copies. Then I gave them as Christmas gifts to a few friends with an invitation for our ‘first’ wine tasting. The idea caught on.
Now we are a fairly active wine club learning how to taste, smell and describe wines in terms that we understand and more importantly discovering wines we love and all the while spending time with the girls.
The book is fun to read, easy to understand and it’s packed with information. All you need to know about starting a wine club lies between these pages. The format is simple: each month Ms. Petrosky invites you to explore a seasonal wine; Champagne in January, Riesling in June, Zinfandel in October. She offers a complementary menu for each wine that will allow you taste, compare and experience the diversity of the wine with and without food.
The ‘host’ of the tasting assigns the wines and prepares the food. Each guest brings their assigned wine and the tastings begin, first through a blind tasting of each wine and then a second tasting with food.
Ms. Petrosky is a certified Master Sommelier, Lifestyle Expert and she writes a rocking blog (maureenpetrosky.com). As you read through the book her love for all that is wine becomes apparent. She is focused on bringing the joy of the wine tasting experience to you in a casual, no-pressure setting. (She just came out with a new book: The Cocktail Club; I definitely see this in my future).
Every Wine Tasting brings its share of surprises. When we tasted Chardonnay, (when I came of age Chardonnay was my go to choice of wine to order when I wanted to sound sophisticated), our wines ranged in price from $7.99 for an Australian Chard to $70.00 for a Cakebread. Cakebread makes some really nice wines. But for this wine tasting, the hands down ‘winner’ was the lower priced Australian wine (Lindemans). We are not certified wine tasters but we’re not neophytes either. I’ve found that blind wine tastings are great for culling some good wines at reasonable prices.
You can follow the suggested calendar of wines and menus or you can mix it up. We pretty much followed the book for the first two years but then began to experiment with different foods and wines the more comfortable we became.
Pick the book up and you too, will be hooked. My copy is tabbed for easy reference and tattered from use. The recipes are great and I have used many of them at my dinner parties. I have also continued to give the book as a gift because it’s so engaging.
Now with all this talk about fun, don’t lose sight of the fact that you will actually learn a lot about wine. But no matter how you taste it the result is always good food, real wine knowledge you can understand and use and a party with your friends.
Now, to choose a wine for the Tasting …