I was recently invited to a fundraising event in support of St Mungo’s Broadway. This event, organised by SA Law, took the form of a contest: a blind wine tasting… clearly my favourite type of contest!After the welcome drinks, we were divided into teams and sat around tables laid with platters of cheese and crackers. We first listened to a presentation of St Mungo’s Broadway's initiatives to help the homeless and after the introductions, we started !
Believe it or not, there is a true art to taste a wine blind. It is like a puzzle where colours, aromas and tastes make up the pieces. It is a challenge which requires concentration and immerses you in remote memories.
The oenologist who had chosen the wines started to give us elementary tips: how to stick your nose in a glass of wine, to give it a couple of sniffs, swirls and sips; how to look at a wine, its viscosity, pigmentation and color which is usually the first clue to find out the variety of grape used in its production.
We were given charts with several suggestions for the country, the name, the year and the price. We started with a white wine: it was not so easy! We got the country, the year and the price right… not the region! We were then offered two glasses of sparkling wine: one was Champagne, the other was a sparkling wine processed according to the ‘Méthode Champenoise’. Our first, instinctive choice was unanimous and... correct. However, when we started to apply the techniques of smell (yeast versus fruit), sights (small bubbles versus bigger ones) and got into the intellectual – if I may call it so – approach, we ended up with the wrong result! We still got the correct price and year. The next test was not wine… We were given a small box with 4 tiny jars. Each jar contained the aroma of a common fruit we had to recognise. This was baffling: the fruits were pear, blackcurrent, raspberry and grapefruit. Though we were all familiar with these fruits, it was truly difficult to recognise them by just smelling them. The toughest was undoubtedly black current despite being one of the most popular fruit juice in the UK: Ribena!
At this point of the contest, the general atmosphere was merry, chatty and... bubbly! The last wine was a red… the toughest one! The aspect of the robe and aromas were clearly misleading… We ended up with the correct price and age but the wrong country and region. How frustrating!
This great evening was drawing to an end. We had a raffle and ended with ‘Head or Tails’ which I had never heard of.
We all left with the curious impression that we were parting from dear friends… Truly there is nothing like a wine tasting evening to make friends and enjoy the lightness of life!
Written by Florence Tilkens. Florence is Social Media and Marketing Manager at FOCUS.
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