{"id":2144,"date":"2022-07-26T21:18:39","date_gmt":"2022-07-26T21:18:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=2144"},"modified":"2022-07-26T21:25:31","modified_gmt":"2022-07-26T21:25:31","slug":"how-to-make-wine-tasting-discoveries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=2144","title":{"rendered":"How to Make Wine Tasting Discoveries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Christopher Columbus wasn\u2019t trying to discover America.\u00a0 He was looking for China and stopped in Hispaniola, which of course had already been \u201cdiscovered\u201d by the people living there.\u00a0 All the same it worked out pretty well (except for the natives).\u00a0 If you want to make discoveries on a wine tasting trip, you can\u2019t set out to find them; you have to let them happen and recognize them when you do.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/IMG_3440.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-2145 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/IMG_3440-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"612\" height=\"408\" srcset=\"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/IMG_3440-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/IMG_3440-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/IMG_3440-1024x683.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 612px) 100vw, 612px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Moshin Vineyards\u2019 tasting room.<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Be adventurous<\/strong> \u2013 Take the side roads off the main drag, whether that be Sonoma County\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1965\">Route 101<\/a>, Burgundy\u2019s Route des Vins, or the D2 in Bordeaux. You don\u2019t know what you\u2019ll find there and in fact there may be no wineries at all.\u00a0 But sometimes there\u2019s a little ch\u00e2teau with a small production and a limited distribution that blows your mouth away.\u00a0 As often as not, you\u2019ll get to meet the owner, who doubles as the winemaker and whose daughter is the only one there who can speak English.\u00a0 And you\u2019ll be served in their kitchen.\u00a0 You won\u2019t forget an experience like that.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Be prepared to fail <\/strong>\u2013 Alas, some of those little unknown wineries are small and unfamiliar for a reason. This is especially true if you\u2019re on a tasting trip through regions where the wines are just names to you.\u00a0 If you\u2019re on your own, for the first time in the South Africa\u2019s Stellenbosch, the Barossa in Australia or California\u2019s Santa Clara Valley, you\u2019ll have no idea what\u2019s to be found in the next winery down the road.\u00a0 Maybe you\u2019ll get lucky but there\u2019s just as good a chance that what you\u2019ll find is something you wouldn\u2019t put on your table.\u00a0 You have to take your chances.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Recognize a discovery when you make one <\/strong>\u2013 Most American tasting rooms have a variety of wines available to taste. (So do many overseas, but in regions such as Burgundy or Tuscany, they may make only one kind of wine.)\u00a0 If you\u2019ve never heard of the winery or the wines they make, your reactions may be summarized as \u201ceh, meh, ugh, and wow\u201d.\u00a0 It\u2019s important not to let the first three color your perceptions so you can tell that a wow is a WOW.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/iron-horse.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-2146 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/iron-horse-300x225.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"628\" height=\"471\" srcset=\"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/iron-horse-300x225.png 300w, https:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/iron-horse-768x576.png 768w, https:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/iron-horse.png 845w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 628px) 100vw, 628px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Iron Horse Vineyards\u2019 \u201ctasting room\u201d.\u00a0 Photo courtesy of Pinterest.<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Make the most of what you find <\/strong>\u2013 The wines you try in an unknown winery may fall well below your standards but the overall experience may be a discovery in itself. There may be a beautiful landscape or a fine art collection or architecture that thrills you.\u00a0 Contrarily, you may find superb wine being served in what is little more than a shed.\u00a0 Iron Horse Vineyards fits into this latter category and is truly a discovery in itself.\u00a0 The entire premise of <em>Power Tasting<\/em> is that the wine tasting experience is more important even than the wines by themselves.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The overall point is that you can\u2019t and won\u2019t make discoveries unless you are open to them.\u00a0 Throw away your preconceptions.\u00a0 Be ready to try something you\u2019re unfamiliar with.\u00a0 Trust your eyes and your taste buds.\u00a0 You\u2019ll reap rewards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christopher Columbus wasn\u2019t trying to discover America.\u00a0 He was looking for China and stopped in Hispaniola, which of course had already been \u201cdiscovered\u201d by the people living there.\u00a0 All the same it worked out pretty well (except for the natives).\u00a0 If you want to make discoveries on a wine tasting trip, you can\u2019t set out &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=2144\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">How to Make Wine Tasting Discoveries<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2147,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144\/revisions\/2147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}