04/14/08 Horizontal Wine Tasting

Welcome to Vine to Wine this is your host Linda Moran and today we are answering a question from the email. A listener writes " I am familiar with a vertical wine tasting but the other day I heard someone discussing a horizontal wine tasting. What is that?" Having a theme or a format to a wine tasting helps to organize and focus on a topic. It also helps you and your fellow wine drinkers to talk and learn more about wine. A "Horizontal Wine Tasting" is a tasting in which you select wines from the same vintage but different producers. I recommend deciding if you want to taste, red or white wines and determine a particular variety. For example: I attended a wine tasting of eight red wines, all Cabernet Sauvignon from the 1998 vintage. Two of the wines were from Sonoma County, two from Napa Valley, two from Australia and two from Washington state. We could easily have tasted all eight wines from the same region for an even more focused tasting. The interesting thing about that type of tasting is that you learn a great deal about the producers and their differences within the region. You can discuss which styles may still be worthy of further aging, or how differing types and amounts of oak may effect the wine from one producer to the next. My tasting group tends to enjoy that very much. Try organizing a "Horizontal Wine Tasting" and you may be surprised just how much you can learn while having fun. Remember to send your wine questions to Linda at vine to wine dot net and thanks for joining me on today's Vine to Wine.