Seven Word Wine Review

Me being creative

Vim, of 12x75.com, started Seven Word Wine Review.  (click on link to read the story).  I had read various 7 word reviews on Twitter and loved them.  What a fun, unpretentious way to rate wine.  I contacted Vim about started a chapter in Oregon.  Our first event had 8 people and was held at our home.  I asked everyone to bring a bottle of wine and a dish to share with all.  This past Saturday evening we had our 3rd event.  16 people attended. The requirement for this evening was to bring a French Wine under $25.00 and a dish paired with your wine. The challenge was that it was a blind tasting.  I must admit we all found this to be incredibly challenging as we didn't know the varietel which almost always leads you to your if it's Pinot Noir it must be berries, if it's Chardonnay it must be buttery oak.

Wine is poured, swirled, sniffed and sipped.  For some of us (aka me) this has to be done more that once.  We then throw out words, fruity, grass, lemons and I sit at my laptop and type furiously to catch all the phrases.  From those phrases we all come up with a sentence. This past Saturday we were very creative, so creative that a person on Twitter could not understand what the we were saying about the wine. Maybe our reviews were too specific to our group?

The first wine we had was Vin de Sauvoie Apremont.  On the nose there was lots of tropical fruit and sweetness, but when we tasted the wine it fell flat.  Not a hint of sweetness, more puckerish and had a rusty nail undertone.  This is the 7 word wine review we came up with.

“Bipolar Hawaiian in need of tetanus shot”

Next wine was Chateau La Freynelle 2009 Bordeaux.  On the nose it smelled like walking through a candy shop filled with sherbet, cotton candy and sweetness, but alas on the taste it was very disappointing not a hint of the candy heaven we had on the nose.  So this is what we came up with.

“Willy Wonka’s factory for a diabetic oompahloompah”

Yes, our reviews are not conventional, we are not creating reviews to sell the wine, but creating reviews to have fun and learn.  At this event we had three new people who were intimidated by wine.  They feared that their lack of wine knowledge would show.  By having everyone say out loud what they smelled or tasted gave them confidence in participating.

Now this is where it got totally awesome.  We poured Des Hauts Chassis Crozes Hermitage 2010.  One of the newbies looked at me and quietly said, "I smell wet newspaper and canned tuna."  She was right, many of us smelled this and we determined that the bottle was corked. She thought she was being silly and would never have said anything at a restaurant as her confidence in wine was lacking. At the end of the evening she thanked me for encouraging her to come as she had learned that wine tasting is not intimidating, but loads of fun and she learned so much.

So while our reviews may not be conventional these once a month get togethers are educational and fun and I think that this is what Vim intended seven word wine review to be.

*if you would like to join the 7 word wine review revolution, go to http://12x75.com/contact/ and let Vim know that you want to play along too.