Elbows Up! The do's and dont's of wine portfolio tasting for beginners
With the portfolio tasting season approaching (see the full schedule here), should there be a game plan or do you charge in elbows up?!
How do you prepare and what do you need?
Private client tastings tend to be shoehorned at the end of the day, meaning 300+ attendees descend on the hall with only a few hours to taste 250+ wines from 40+ producers so (spoiler alert!) a plan of attack is a good start. What do you want to achieve from the tasting? Are you looking for your new house pour, a new find or to discover new wines/regions that you have not discovered?
What tools are at your disposal?
Traditionally, there will be a tasting booklet on arrival with a pencil. Grab that, a glass of bubbles and a seat. The layout is always simple, tables set out around the room organised by regions and numbered. Realistically you will not be able to taste hundreds of wines, and your palate will have departed the room after the fiftieth sample anyway.
The best order of play
- Warm up the Pallet - Start with a few sparkling and light ‘zippy’ white and rose wines to warm up the pallet. Don’t get too distracted because there's a long way to go.
- Work your way up the body - The last thing you want to do is jump right in with a full-bodied 15% ABV Amarone. Explore some lighter regions to experience the elegance of the wine.
- Finish on a high – Ending your exploration with a sublime wine allows you to appreciate how far you have come (providing there is any left!)
- Re-visit your top contenders – Your taste and opinion of one wine shifts with the consumption of another so it’s always a good idea to re-visit your favourites to get a second opinion
Who will be there?
Generally speaking, there will be a core of drinks party attendees. They know what they are going to buy already, the same as last year and plenty of it, so they are just there for any available nibbles and refills.
The main tastings that Merchants organise are their Portfolio Tastings, the aim being to expose clients to all the wines that they sell with all the updated vintages and any new little gems on the roster.
You’ll receive an invitation with timings, the date and list of wines, marvellous! What a fantastic way to spend a couple of hours with a crowd of like-minded folk musing over the fruit profiles and nuances of your favourite wines.
Do’s
- Be polite as most of the pourers have been on their feet for a while.
- Tilt your glass for samples.
- Just say the number or gesture to which bottle you’d like to try next.
- If you like a particular producer, try as much of the range as possible. Good value can generally be found in the middle wines of the estate.
- Listen if the winemaker wants to tell you about their wine, it has taken a lot of work to produce.
Don’t
- Cherry-pick the top wines without trying some of the range. It’s good to get an overall picture of the winemaking style from a producer. And it’s rude!
- Try and pronounce the wine names with barely passable modern languages skills. The room will be noisy enough without the added confusion of franglais.
- Hog space at the samples table, it’s not a drinks party.
- Think that you can hit the spittoon from a distance. You are bound to hit someone with an errant spray.
- Wear a white linen suit!
- Wear any kind of scent. A strong nose of old spice or Chanel No5 should not feature in tasting notes.
- Say that you hate Chardonnay but love a good Chablis. Grape varieties tasting notes can change drastically by region and country (and you haven’t tried them all).
