We taste almost every wine before it goes on the list and invest heavily in doing so. We also invest heavily in the machines we use to taste, our eyes, nose and mouth! Personally. I’ve tasted 10’s of thousands of wines from around the world, spent years doing formal sensory assessment training and completed the Advanced Wine Assessment Course run by Australia’s premier Wine Institute, the Australian Wine Research Institute. Most importantly I’ve spent much of this time tasting with people that know more about wine than me, it’s the best way to learn!
We’ve spent thousands on samples, many of which I’ve poured down the drain. A few weeks ago tasting 45 wines in a session we came away with only 3 that passed muster.
To give you an idea of the magnitude of the cost. We need to sell nearly 200 cases of wine at $200 a case to cover the cost of tasting samples to date.
We see this as an investment. The only reason we’d ever put a wine on the list that we hadn’t tried would be if it was extremely expensive. When we do we have enough background with the produce and experience with there wine to have comfort doing so.
We also taste multiple times to verify our selection. Primary tasting, later in the day, with food, next day (we exclude the obvious duds). By using a Coravin we also revisit wines individually, often days, weeks or even months later.
Sure we look at the technical stuff, make sure the wines not faulty, most importantly we look at the Overall Beauty of the wine. It has to have a personality, be yummy, be inviting, call out to you saying “DRINK ME!”
Yup, that’s me recording notes on all the wines.
We also assess what we call QPR – Quality Price Ratio. We’ve had some wines that pass the taste test, but, simply don’t compare to others that are cheaper, so we don’t put them on the list. We also benchmark against other retail sites and if we can’t be competitive we don’t offer the wine.
In the next couple of months, we will be launching our “Tasting Revolution” experience.
Free to Wine Decoded Members, you get access to 6 short, interactive videos explaining the 5 things you need to know to taste wine.
Here at Wine Decoded we don’t believe in watching people taste wine. You’ll only have fun if you’re tasting wine! Each session we’ll set you up to taste wines giving you real-world experience to make it easier to understand what we’re talking about. You’ll be able to use wine you’ve got around the house, or, preferably you can buy some from us! 😉
We’ve overcomplicated wine. There are too many words that just don’t make sense.
Sure, it’s like anything, you do need to get the basics.
This is not some random crap we’ve made up! This is based on 25 years of experience with wine, 15 years making it, a degree in Winemaking, completing the invite-only Advanced Wine Assessment Course targeted at Wine Show Judge, tasting 10,000’s of wines from around the world, and, personally training dozens of people to taste wine.
This is not about marketing, this is about yumminess. You won’t find any “High Pixel Tannins” or “Scent of a Siberian Hampster” here!
By the time you’ve finished, you’ll be tasting wine using the same technique we use when ploughing through the 1,000’s of wine we taste to find yumminess to put in the Wine Decoded Shop.
To help you remember, while you practice “Wine Tasting” we’ll send you our Wine Decoded Tasting Revolution card with the 5 things you need to know to taste wine on the back!
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