Wine-Tasting...Right in Your Kitchen

For many of us, wine-tasting is a favorite fall activity. Yet getting to the city’s nearest wineries upstate, on Long Island, or in New Jersey requires the careful coordination of train schedules, cab fare, and car rentals—and often means that more time will be spent in transit than in the enjoyment of your favorite varietals. So, rather than trekking out of the city for a tasting, why not bring the wine-tasting to you? This is what my friend Michele did on Friday night, in what turned out to be a fun and clever event.

Around seven p.m., twelve women poured into Michele’s kitchen, six with bottles of red wine and six with white (Michele asked us each what we’d be bringing beforehand to ensure that reds and whites would both be well-represented). We gathered around her kitchen table, where she had a spread of at least ten different kinds of cheeses. On one side of the table, to go with white wines, there were Brie, fontina, goat cheeses, and goudas; on the red side of the table were sharp cheddars, blue cheeses, and gorgonzola; and in the middle was an assortment of crackers and olives. We settled in, trying to refrain from doing too much damage with the cheese knives before Michele finished explaining to us which cheeses went with which wines.

Next, we were given slips of paper that Michele had prepared so that we could rate each wine we tasted. On the left side were the letters A through E, which would correspond to the six whites we were about to taste. On the right were blank spaces in which we could give each wine a rating from one to five, where one meant “I don’t care for this wine at all” and five meant “I love this wine!”

Once we were all set up with pens and rating sheets, the tasting began. Michele came around with several Rieslings, a few pinot grigios, a sauvignon blanc, and a chardonnay, and we swirled, sniffed, and sipped, then rated, nibbling on cheese and crackers in between. We weren’t told which wines had been brought by which guests, and, once we were done with the whites, the ratings were tallied, and the winner of the highest rated white—a Kris pinot grigio—was given a wine stopper as a prize.

Then it was on to the reds. While pouring the wines one by one and tasting together had worked well for the whites, the increase in volume and chattiness that is bound to occur when twelve females are plied with six bottles of wine led Michele to take a different tactic with the reds. She marked each bottle with a letter from A through E and then set them up on her counter and let us help ourselves. We tasted at our own pace, trying several pinot noirs, a gamay noir, cabernets, merlots, and a zinfandel and then giving each wine a rating on a new set of sheets just like the ones we had used for the whites.

By the end of what turned out to be a delightful evening, we had tasted an ample assortment of wines, each of us finding at least one new favorite, and some of us even going home with prizes.

So, the next time you’re in the mood to do a little wine-tasting, consider hosting a tasting of your own.

Your friends will be glad you did.