Speed tasting is not a new phenomenon but they should be back in vogue if Mike has got anything to do with it. He first encountered it in Sonoma County, California on a recent press junket.
From a tasting point of view, one of the best events of the week in California was one morning at Keller Estate near the famous little town of Petaluma (of the famous Gap) in Sonoma County. It was speed tasting, where the ten of us would each sit for ten minutes with a winemaker, and then move on once the time was up to the next one.
Anyone thinking of running trade tastings in the near future needs to have a serious think about one of these.
Having never done one of these before I was pretty nervous. Anyone who’s ever been on a trip with me will know that I don’t mind asking a couple of questions here and there, but I struggle to maintain….how do I put it?…100% professionalism for longer than two minutes.
On your marks, get set, go!
Ten minutes of one-to-one in the company of a winemaker who’s just travelled an hour or two to be there was daunting. Effectively I just didn’t want to piss them off. But luckily it went off just great.
The idea behind it makes perfect sense.
When you’ve only got a limited number of days in a big old area like Sonoma, what are you going to do? Sit on the bus all day everyday and fly round looking at a load of new steel tanks in the proud owners’ wineries? Nah. It’s not what any of us, or my travel vertigo (I’m a precious little flower) is up for. The whole point of these trips is to get down and dirty, conversationally of course, with the owners and winemakers.
And there we have it, spot on!
It really helps the set-up if you have a community of winemakers that know each other and are supportive of each other. I often think this about English winemakers – they’re all in it to help the collective and promote everyone’s wines – and these Sonoma chaps and chapettes were just the same.
Sonoma is an area that is absolutely full of different soils, microclimates, and winemaking techniques and ethos, that no one’s really doing the same thing and is therefore in direct competition with each other. It’s about them all coming together and saying “Hey, check out Sonoma, guys!” It makes for the necessary relaxed atmosphere in the room.
Not that we didn’t have fun and do interesting stuff for the rest of the week, but this event was a real highlight for most of the guys and girls on the trip, and I reckon for the winemakers themselves.
Would you want to taste these beauties in a matter of seconds?
I always think the first thing that’s important when chatting with people is working them out as a person – what makes them tick/laugh/interested and all the rest. When you’re in a big group sometimes you can drift off a bit, but these one-on-ones made you get to know each other as quickly as possible so you can wax lyrical about the individual wines, winery, and the winemaking process.
Speed tasting also allowed me to ask as many random questions as I thought was allowable.
As I said, make sure you try and work out the person you’re speaking to first, but I’m not one for talking all the time about the wine. I always want to know what makes the winemaker tick. I guess it has something to do with coming from a different professional background and stumbling into the wine industry.
So for me it’s equally interesting to know what they would have done had they not got into wine, or where they’re from, or what sports or music they’re into. It all adds a picture of the personality, and that makes you remember the chat even more. Just sitting there, sipping the wine, and giving it the ol’ “Mmm yes, very nice” for ten minutes? What’s that about?
There were only two main drawbacks.
Once I get going and chatting I find it difficult to stop as long as the other person is doing the same. Ten minutes to get your questions out there and taste through the three (or more) different wines each winemaker brought along went very quickly indeed. So, as a tip for anyone about to go and do one of these, make sure you remember to taste the wines and don’t just have to nail them all during the ‘one minute warning’!
The other thing was to try and blinker yourself from what’s happening to the left and right.
Although the tasting was held at Keller Estate, it really helped that there was a community of winemakers taking part
I had Noel Young (a winemaker and a buyer for his own very impressive independent set-up) to my right and Peter Ranscombe (Scottish Field and BQ magazine) to my left. I made the massive mistake of comparing my questions with theirs.
When Noel’s asking about yields from the top vineyards, and I’m asking about the names of the vineyards’ pet dogs, it’s hard to not feel like a complete doofus. You have just got to close your ears off to those things and do it your own way.
In closing, I guess the main reason I wanted to write this article was say to people who run wine tastings, be it for trade or for consumers, the idea of this Speed Tasting worked really well. Intense, yeah, but hugely memorable. I know they’ve been done before, and they’re nothing new, but I don’t know where they’ve been for the past few years, because I’ve never done one before!
I, and I’m sure lots of buyers, sommeliers, and journalists, would be well up for more of these!
Cheers
