Often as we travel in Europe, we visit towns that are central (or at least near) to the area’s winemaking. The one thing they all have in common is that they are heavily visited by tourists. These have included Taormina in Sicily, Beaune in France and Dubrovnik in Croatia. Often, as we walk around the towns, we see signs that say, “Dégustation” or the equivalent in the local language. Degustation is an English word that means “tasting”, so the shops that the signs are in front of could be bakeries or delis, but they’re always in front of wine shops.
A scene from the film, La Dégustation.
There are always bars that we could go to – and have gone to – where we could sample the local wines. We well remember such a bar in Épernay, France with four glasses of Champagne lined up on our table. But that’s not what a Dégustation is. Nor is it a bistro with a good list of wines by the glass. It’s a store, where people can go in and buy bottles.
When talking about wine, a Dégustation is, as the word implies, a wine tasting. It’s not at a winery and in fact it usually consists of a selection of wines from the vendor’s stock. They are meant to show off the best, or at least typical, wines of the region where the shop is located. A good one really does highlight top wines. Others are more likely to feature bottles that the shop is trying to get rid of. (You can almost hear the shop owner saying, “Heck, they’re only tourists. They won’t know the difference and I’ll never see them again.”)
We’ve run into both types. How can we tell the difference? In most instances, we’ve never been to that town before and are unlikely to go there again. And we don’t know the wines on offer. So all we could do is try our luck, winning sometimes and not in other cases.
As said, Dégustations are not bars. Customers pay a flat fee for four or five tastes. In this way they differ from Italian enotecas, where we could also buy wines by the bottle, for consumption on-site or back home. But in enotecas, we could buy wines by the glass.
One virtue of Dégustations is that the vendor often acts not only as a seller of his own wines but as an educator on the wines of the region. For example, there are plenty of Degustaziones in Montalcino. We know in advance that the shop will be serving Brunellos, because that’s what they make in that Tuscan village and its environs. Ah, but which ones? We are familiar with a few and we enjoy a good Brunello, but we’re hardly expert enough to know which are the best and which are just ordinary. So we listen as the shopkeeper explains the climate and soil conditions around the village and how they affect the aromas and tastes of each wine. If we show a little interest – even better, buy a bottle or two – the server is likely to open some extra wines, to tempt us further.
Dégustations are not better than visiting wineries, but if we are on a trip where we don’t have wheels, they’re a great opportunity to become acquainted with the wines made where we happen to be.