February 28, 2025 | secret sips: a blind tasting, a trust fall, an appreciation of brown bags

Secret Sips

This week, we're keeping our cards close to the vest. In lieu of our regularly scheduled programming, we are hosting a guided deductive tasting. Wine students will oftentimes use what is called the "deductive tasting method" when learning how to evaluate a wine for style, quality, and value. What does that entail? We got you!

1. Appearance - What are we looking at? Think color, hue, concentration, clarity, etc. Believe it or not, a lot can be revealed based on color alone! (Color can deceive just as much as it enlightens so beware of being hasty in your conclusions)

2. Aroma - What does it smell like? No one has smelled every smell that you've smelled. If you say a red wine smells like the blueberry pie your grandmother used to make, we believe you! That's the beauty of wine; the romantic relationship between scent and memory, the potential for transportation. With that being said, there are certain flavor clusters we can focus on (fruit, flower, earth, etc..) and distill down from there. For example, this smells like red fruit... red cherry... sour red cherry... Jolly Rancher! Tasting note complete. We'll focus on cleanliness, intensity, fruit and non-fruit aromas, youth vs. development, and more.

3. Palate - What's it taste like? Taste, like smell, is super subjective. Trust yourself, trust your instincts, trust your experiences. Consider the cultural framework of your existence - star fruit may be native to your home, while lychee may be native to someone else's. A wine displaying notes of tropical fruit can successfully be described by either fruit; both answers can be true based on varied personal lived experience. Be generous with your imagination. We'll consider fruit, fruit character (ripe, underripe, sour, etc.), florality, earth, wood influence, length of finish, complexity, and finally - is it yum?

We aim to encourage you to trust your palate, your instincts, and your evaluations. Wine is an intimately personal experience, with perceptions of flavor, aroma, texture, etc. varying from palate to palate. When given the tools and language to empower yourself, you can find the wine style that works for you. A wine is successful if it evokes a reaction, for better or for worse. Let's experiment together. Trust us, we got your back.

TLDR: We're not telling you what you're trying. All bottles will be in brown bags, prices will be listed. If you like it, you buy it, unrevealed. Find out what your new favorite is once you get home and rip open the bag (or on the sidewalk, let's be real - just no spoilers, please). We'll send a follow up email on Saturday with the big reveal.

Let's taste :)