From a food consumer and farming perspective, you’d be reluctant to buy a bushel of Tomatoes or a bag of Ruby Red Grapefruit without sampling the quality and taste of the vegetables or fruit - in a similar manner, you’d be reluctant to shell out $20-$50 for a bottle of a fine handmade wine without first sampling that wine.
One way for a boutique winery to get the word out on their artisan crafted wines is to hold tastings at charitable and public service organization fundraisers, County fairs, and other wine lover oriented venues.
Wine tourists love the intimate and personal experience of visiting tasting rooms of small, family-owned wineries.
Conducting public wine tastings are a fun way to engage future customers and tell then about your wines and how they are made.
You get to talk to the actual wine maker, the vineyard manager and the bottling and marketing crew because they are a small family group. You’d never get the same experience from a large commercial winery.
Here in California, the wine industry is heavily regulated and wine tastings are no exception – they must be conducted in accordance with Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) Commission Regulations which stipulate one (1) ounce pours. This doesn’t sound like much wine but trust me, but as a seasoned wine taster I assure you that an ounce is is more than enough.
When I taste wine, I spend a lot of time deliberately evaluating all aspects of the wine beginning with the color and nose (aroma) of wines before I begin tasting the wine.
I usually ask for “short pours” (less than 1 ounce) to avoid wasting what I view as a precious product. My objective it to critically evaluate a wine, and also enjoy its delicate nuances. Drinking too much wine while tasting dulls the senses.
Eagles Nest tastings events display our wine above wine barrels decorated with custom artwork (see photos above) and we always have friends help us with the pourings – they understand our winemaking philosophy and love the whole experience and fun of meeting friendly, wine loving customers. Many of our friends have assisted in the growing, harvest, crushing and bottling of the actual wines so they know first hand how good it is.
Please join us at a local tastings whenever they occur.
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Try before you buy! I subscribe to that premise wholeheartedly!
But (the asterisk behind most statements) I do find myself on occasion, reading about a wine I’ve never tried and purchasing said wine just on the say so of the reviewer. Most of the time I am pretty happy with the results. Once I become familiar with a certain producer I tend to trust or rely upon past experiences and again that practice has held up pretty well!