Village Wine Tasting

Saturday February 9th 2008

Longworth Village Hall

Most of the day was spent in Cambridge visiting Emma at college. All seems to be going well and it was nice to see her. Remarkably, Linda hadn't seen her for 5 weeks - possibly the longest time they have ever had apart.

Back home and we just have time to make it to the "Call my Wine Bluff" event at the village hall, hosted by the local Oxford Wine Company. This is a wine tasting in a somewhat unusual format. We are on a table with 8 others and there are three wine experts on the stage. We are given a bottle in a black sack so the name is obscured and have a sample each. Then the three wine experts get up and give their descriptions of what the wine might be, two of which are, of course, entirely untrue. Then each table has to guess who is telling the truth about the wine and also what we think it should retail at. There is a complex points scheme and an overall winning table.

Neither Linda nor I are particular expert at wine tasting and do not have an extensive list of wines we have tried (particularly all the New World wines that are about these days). But we are very keen wine tasters (drinkers) and as we plan to include a (friendly) wine tasting in each Well Being Break, then we thought we ought to try and raise our knowledge (at least about the way in which wine can be talked about)

Oddly enough, Linda is really good at picking the wines and gets 7 out of 9 correct (when I did about as well as chance and got 3 right). Unfortunately, Linda's view was drowned out by the few people on the table who considered themselves very knowledgeable about wine, but who didn't score as well as Linda. We would have won easily if we'd followed Linda. As it was we came third overall, just a couple of points behind the winners.

But a very enjoyable evening and one that gives us a few things to think about for the Breaks.