Tasting and Pondering

I spent my Saturday evening with a group of women who know more about the ways of the world than I do. Women who have traveled to Europe, the African Continent and beyond, picking up knowledge as they traveled along. They asked me to host a wine tasting party for them. So I took them on a trip to northern France sampling the grape varietals Riesling, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Noir, all from Alsace. My wine classes are more conversational than lecturing. I feel you get more out of learning if you just have a simple, “on the same level”, conversation. I started with a talk on the history of wine and the grapevine and how it spread throughout the world, then on to the Alsace wine region and its history, then to the tasting of wine, which I have feeling was their most favorite part of the evening. Wine tasting is very subjective and I get great pleasure when I hear someone identifying a taste or sensation they had never had when tasting a wine before. I think this is because most people drink wine as opposed to tasting and pondering what‘s in the glass. I suppose we do that sometimes in life, go through instead of actively participating. We had a lot of fun conversing and learning and our evening was spent in full awareness of the wines we were having…quite an experience for all of us. At the end of the evening a few of the women from the class said that they had been to a lot of places and a lot of wine tastings, and that my wine class was the best they had ever been to. What an honor!

Taste and ponder one of the wines we had Saturday evening Pierre Sparr 2007 Riesling....

enjoy