So this weekend we spoiled ourselves a little and enjoyed a day of wine tasting with a wine paired lunch at Berry Bros & Rudd. We have a tendency to favour certain styles of wine / grape varieties and we recognise that there is a danger in becoming too closed minded about what we drink. To that end the wine tasting was both interesting and, in part, a revelation! We blind tasted various ‘pairs’ of wines, often ‘old world versus new world’, and sometimes the same grape / country of origin but ‘traditional versus modern’ approaches to wine making were evident. Whilst we did at times naturally favour the wines we would have expected to prefer, it was not always the case. We also found that some wines we had expected to enjoy were not to our taste at all.
Formal wine tasting such as that which we experienced on Saturday together with a group of other wine enthusiasts made not only for a very pleasant way to spend a day but opened our minds a little and broadened our horizons. It also helped us to think more carefully about what makes a glass of wine taste the way it does.
Our wine tasting was concluded with a fabulous lunch with wine pairing, mostly using a selection of the wines we had tasted during the morning but with one notable exception. We finished our feast with a glass of 1997 Chateau d’Yquem, 1er Grand Cru Classe Superieur, Sauternes, Bordeaux. That was a real treat!
