Wine tasting

The tourist office for the entire region Midi-Pyrénées organizes a lot of different events beyond the traditional offering of tourist offices. There are cooking classes to learn regional dishes, painting classes with pastel, and as B and I discovered this morning, wine tasting classes.

The class was actually part of B's birthday present in July, but I decided to wait for the classes in September rather than register for something in July because the price was really unbeatable. For 28€ per person we got an hour and 1/2 lesson (that turned into 2) with 4 wines. If you're looking for similar classes, I would really suggest checking out the local or regional tourism office instead of going directly to a chateau or restaurant that offers classes.

I'd done a mini wine tasting class with my study abroad program in Montpellier, but besides being 5 years ago and not so fresh in the memory, it wasn't nearly as thorough.

We learned about the stages of wine tasting (visual, odor, and taste) with thorough discussions of the various differences in color, clarity, residue in the glass...then the three groups of odors (primary, secondary, and tertiary) and explanations of which kinds of wines have which odors (only older bottles have tertiary odors, for example), and then the three stages of tasting: attack, development, and after-taste.

The man who gave the course runs the Chateau Labastidié, which is a subsidiary of sorts of the Wine Museum in Paris. He was really knowledgeable, relaxed, and threw in all kinds of neat anecdotes about tasting wines from his career. He explained which things he was doing that were official (our glasses were official tasting glasses, for example), and which things he was just doing for our little class (an aluminum serving tip he put in the bottle to make pouring easier).

Even though he's been a judge for super prestigious taste testings, he told us a number of times that what was important was enjoying the wine and a 2€ bottle can be enjoyed just as much as a 100€ bottle. He added that he almost never opens a bottle just to drink himself, because for him enjoying wine means enjoying it in the company of others.

B and I left our class at 1pm (yes the class began at 11am, although we didn't actually drink anything till about 11:30) feeling much smarter about how to appreciate wine, and also in need of a good lunch! I think the next time we're at a dinner party we'll do more than just sip the wine mindlessly.