With New Year's Eve upon us, followed by the cold & dark winter, maybe discovering some new wine is the perfect idea. My sister-in-law's sister (shout out to Natalie!) introduced us to this "game" many Thanksgivings ago. It's an interesting & entertaining wine tasting with a spin. Perfect for a holiday event or party, when you have friends & family gathered for festivities. At most (traditional) wine tastings, I'm shown a bottle & told about the wine: "This is a Pinot Grigio, from Alto Adige. It's crisp & refreshing." But with Aunt Nat's version, there's very little information provided about the wine, no bias. I really get to dive in with my senses & compare a set of anonymous wines, probably trying something I might not have otherwise even considered.
Here’s how Aunt Nat's Wine Tasting works:
Choose a varietal. Cabernet, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, for example. (A "varietal" is a wine that is
at least 75% made from a single type of grape.) If you don't want to narrow it down to one varietal, some other fun options could be "French Whites" or "Lesser-Known Reds" (such as Dornfelder, Xarel-lo, or Zweigelt). You may just discover a new favorite! I would not recommend, however, mixing reds and whites as the 2 types of wines are so different that it is not really possible to compare. Also, if you opt not to focus on a single varietal, the cost-guessing aspect (more info about this below) of the blind tasting becomes somewhat moot. Different grapes require different cultivation techniques, are grown in different climates & geography, & involve varied vinification processes, making the costs of different wines well, very different.
Buy a selection of wines all of that varietal (or theme), but at different price points. All the way from cheap, cheap, cheap up to whatever you are comfortable with. We tend to do 5 bottles from about $8 to $150. You can also add in wine region to the selection. For example, choose to sample California Cabernets, or Cabernets from all over, or compare California Cabernets to French Cabernets.
Disguise each bottle. Put each bottle in a bag or wrap them up (fun wrapping paper is festive!) so no one is able see anything about the wine or bottle. In the Thanksgiving spirit, we wrap them rather haphazardly with a substantial amount of brown paper bags & masking tape. The wrapped bottles end up looking somewhat like a stuffed Thanksgiving turkey!
Number, or arbitrarily, label each wine, so everyone can keep track of their tastings in an organized fashion. For Christmas time, maybe use the names of reindeer. For a sports related event, consider the names of teams or positions. Have fun with it.
Set up the table or bar. In addition to the wines, make sure there are sufficient glassware & a dump bucket, if people are really just taking a taste and pouring out the rest. It's also helpful to label the glasses in some way, as people are likely to put down their wine glasses & forget which one is theirs. We have used both the wine glass charms & a wax pencil to write directly on the glasses. Make sure to remove the corks & hide them away. Corks often have telltale information printed on them.
Give people paper & pens to keep track of their ratings & impressions of each mystery wine. Or use our template. Make sure people know that, at the end, they will choose their personal favorite, & they will be asked to guess which wine is the most expensive.
Sample the wines. Throughout the day / evening / meal, guests sample each wine, trying to discern the cheap wine from the expensive and rating each wine for their personal preference. For a larger group (and for the statisticians and/or techies among us! Gee, I love a great opportunity to whip up a spreadsheet!), it is also fun to gather all the data together to see if opinions coalesce. Is one wine universally disliked? Do the majority feel that Wine C is the most expensive?
A wine tasting template Choosing Favorites. Provide people with 2 "tokens", one for their personal favorite & one of the wine they think is the most expensive. Use nickels & pennies. Or green stickers & orange stickers. Maybe you even have some Legos lying around the house? Have people put the respective token next to their favorite wine & the wine they think is most expensive.
The Big Reveal! After everyone has rated & ranked the wines, reveal the bottles. (The 2nd page of the template can be used to provide additional information as part of the reveal). It's fun to see if people could determine which wines were expensive and for people to discover which wines they liked. Were they the same? Or did you actually like the cheaper wines better? Did you favor European wines over American ones, or oaked vs un-oaked. How about marketing? Would the label design of the cheaper wines given them away as being "cheaper"? Would you have overlooked your new favorite wine because of a boring label?
Please let us know what you discovered at your latest blind wine tasting?
Did you know that 70 North offers wine flights as a way to sample 4 unique wines? Check out our current wine list. And did you know that many wines are also available in the 70N Market to take home & enjoy. Check out our retail wines.
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