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Hosting Vertical Tastings with Long Island Wines
Posted by
Amanda on 7/24/12
Wine is ever changing. Even in one of the wonderful Long Island wineries, you can expect that you will encounter a variety of flavor notes as the weather and the yield produce different flavors. The best way to see the big differences in these wines is to taste each year side by side. Tasted alone, you may not notice the subtle differences, but when compared side by side, it is easy to see how much these wines have changed over the years.
Cleansing the Palate
Keep in mind that in between each sip of wine, you will need to get rid of the flavor from the last wine. This means cleansing the palate with water. You can drink the water just like you can drink the wine, but it is recommended that you spit it out. This allows you to remove any of the tannins from your mouth and helps to reduce the possibility that you will become intoxicated by drinking too much. Keep in mind that you will not be able to taste as much if you are too drunk. Reserve the drinking of the wines until after you have tried each of the different years.
Choosing a Vineyard
When you are setting up a vertical tasting, it is a good idea to make sure that you are choosing the right vineyard. You should be looking for a vineyard with a reputation for producing quality wines with a consistent flavor. This will allow you to tell the difference between the years where otherwise you might not. Obviously, you will need to choose a vineyard that has been in operation long enough to have produced wines for many years in a row.
Ordering the Tasting
It is important to have an order for which you will taste the different Long Island wines in your vertical. The normal order is to simply go from the most recent year going back. This is good, but you can get even more from the wines you taste if you are willing to skip around in the order of the wines you taste. Try looking at the years that had intense weather conditions and isolating these from the years in which the conditions were normal. This will allow you to fully appreciate the effect that weather has on the outcome of the wines that are produced from these wonderful Long Island wineries.
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