First Time Wine Tasting? Try a Wine Festival
Sunday, October 7th, 2007
From my first time experience at wine tasting I have some good advice. Don’t drink everything you are given. True, the tasting amounts are small, but tasting dozens and dozens of wines can add up. Especially if you are wine tasting for a few hours.
I went to a Fredericksburg wine tasting festival this weekend (10/7/07) and there were 10 or so wineries represented. Each winery had about 10 - 20 wines each so there was a lot to taste. It pays to pace yourself and understand you are going to be sipping a lot of wines and you want to taste from each winery. Here is some good advice, once you find out what you don’t like, as in Chardonnay, then don’t keep tasting it at other booths. After the fourth Chardonnay I realized I don’t like them, no matter what winery is producing them. Luckily it only took 3 tastings to firmly convince myself I don’t like Merlot either. Halfway through I quit tastings red wines altogether. I don’t like them without food and it was giving me a bad impression so that I was afraid I was going to convince myself I don’t like red wine at all.
So I stayed to tasting just the blended wines and the white wines and was very happy with my choices.
Since this was my first time and I know nothing about wines I used it as an experience to discover what I do like. I marked down all the wines that I liked, regardless of price (the average price was about $15 per bottle). At the end of the day I have discovered 4 wines I really liked and about 3 more that could grow on me. I found I don’t like dry wines as much and I really like blended wines, which I wasn’t familiar with before I went.
Wines I bought and the wineries:
- Mandolin - Doukenie Winery
- Lake Side White - Lake Anna Winery
- DeWeese White - Hartwood Winery
- Peach Fuzz - Burnley Vineyard
I also thought it was good that I went to a festival so I could try many winery offerings. There was one winery there that I didn’t like any of the wines from, including their white wines. What a disappointment that would have been to visit that winery and not like anything I tasted. So first a first try at wine tasting a wine festival is a great way to go.
Additionally at a wine tasting festival, you can cover more ground so to speak and tasted more wine in a short amount of time. Walking to the next tent takes one minute, while driving between wineries can talk 30 minutes or more.
I did buy quite a few wines while there, including some red which my wife liked especially. See the picture and let me know if you see any you recognize. This festival was in Fredericksburg, Va and the wines were all Virginia wines.
