Some of our wine tasting trips are certain to be full of novelty. That’s because we are visiting winemaking regions where we’ve never been before. Most recently for us, that was our travel to Penedes in Spain, as reported in a previous issue of Power Tasting. But mostly, we return year after year to certain areas in California, New York and France. (Even the great Robert Parker specialized.) Every time we go wine tasting, we face the same dilemma: Do we re-visit old favorites or do we find wineries that we’ve never been to before.
There are several attractions to going back where we have been before. For one, we like to stop in at wineries where we are members of their clubs. Tastings are free for us at these tasting rooms, which is appealing in these days of high-priced degustations. But just as important, we know that we are going to have wines we enjoy. How do we know? Because those wines are waiting for us back at home.
Domaine Carneros in Napa Valley, known for its sparkling wines, but where we prefer their Pinot Noirs.
Then why go out of our way to taste those wines? Because we never get to taste them side by side. We recently visited a winery where we regularly buy Pinot Noir as club members. Tasting each of the wines one after the other, sip at a time, we discovered nuances in wines we knew we liked that weren’t apparent to us before. We also found a Pinit Noir on their list that we hadn’t previously tried and realized that we really liked it.
Beyond the wines, we know that as members of the club, we will receive an especially warm welcome. In many instances, we have known the servers and staff for years. Even those we don’t know seem to go out of their way to give a better explanation of what they pour and maybe find a little something that isn’t generally served to the general public.
On the other hand, we experience a special excitement when we discover a winery we hadn’t heard of before. There’s a sense of “Where have you been all my wine tasting life?” In areas we know well, we may have driven past that winery for years, only happening to stop by on one trip. Finding a wine or two that we truly enjoy is like getting a birthday present when it isn’t our birthday.
It is also a unique experience when we visit a famous maison in the US or abroad that we had only read about before. There is a feeling we get when tasting wine made by a French aristocrat in his chateau, that can’t be replicated elsewhere. That’s a real chateau, not a faked-up Napa palace! And if the wine has been known to be great since 1855, so much the better.
There is an old expression, “New friends are like silver; old friends are like gold.” This applies to wine tasting as well. We’ll keep our old favorites and visit them again and again. But we’ll continue to seek out new wines and tasting experiences as well.