One of our more snobby activities here is the wine tasting club. The club meets every 2 weeks or so for a guided tasting, with occasional sponsored (i.e. free) tastings and sometimes even blind tastings. Some of the club members are very competitive and they probably study at home a lot more than we do – but it pays off, since the members with the best results in the blind tastings get to go to a Pol Roger tasting competition in France for free!
Our first tasting back in October was blind, and our table won! Beginners’ luck, I think – we successfully guessed the 7 different varietals we tasted that night. Our prize was … another bottle of wine! We were a little worse for wear after that.
“A little worse for wear” describes how we felt most of yesterday too. Monday’s tasting was a free one sponsored by the nice people of Citigroup, and held at the New Club – the equivalent of the Terminal City Club, with really nice views of Edinburgh. Ian had to wear a suit, so we did some last-minute shopping on Sunday and he came out looking quite handsome.
After tasting 6 generous portions of different wines with no spit-bucket in sight, we carried on to a lounge/bar for more (and this time, significantly more expensive) drinks. The evening would not have been complete without a frostbite-inducing march home, capped with tasty kebab take-out to make up for not having eaten anything in about 8 hours.
It’s been fun to try so many different wines that we never see at home in the liquor stores, and some that we could never afford to buy here. The wine stores here carry a huge selection of European wines, and we’ve even tried some from Lebanon (who knew they grew grapes?). Unfortunately it’s a bit more difficult to find good New World wines here, and Canadian wine … Canada who?
Technorati Tags: wine, Chateau Musar, Lebanon, Edinburgh Wine Tasting Society, New Club, Opal Lounge
A wine tasting club, fancy that! I must remember to look for one of those here in Edmonton, Alberta. I doubt, however, that such a club here will benefit from the kind of sponsorship you reference in this blog post, but a boy can dream.
It’s too bad Canadian wines aren’t on the radar where you are. I grew up in a wine-making region––Niagara, Ontario––and the promotions coming from the Canadian wine-making industry would have you believe that Canadian wines have been embraced by wine enthusiasts everywhere. It sounds like Canadian wine is as easy to come by as Red Rose tea, assuming there is truth to the latter’s commercials.
You never know! Maybe you’ll find a sponsored wine tasting club … or at least a festival or trade show or two. I’ve visited a winery in the Niagara Falls region, and many in the Okanagan. I never seem to find any non-BC Canadian wines in the BC liquor stores though!