Friday the 22nd of February I attended the wine tasting featuring Italian wines at K'Syrah in Camas. I was with a friend who really tastes the wines while I generally drink them, decide which one I like the best and go back for more of the same. This is how the first comments went:
"I'm disappointed already."
"Really? I like it, it's so cute! Look at the candles, and the colors they've painted the walls, very cool place."
"I think your pour is bigger than mine."
"It says here each pour is one and a half ounces."
"Hmm, I don't know about that. How can they say it's tasting from Northern Italy and not include wines from ..." and then I quit listening because I don't know the different regions of Italy and was pretty sure I wouldn't retain them at that time.
This is a good introduction to the different levels of wine tasting. In my experience there are three to four levels of wine tasters. There is the beginner who is a little, maybe a lot, intimidated by the whole wine tasting arena. This is because they've heard the expert wine taster speak. We'll get there in a minute. The newbie is just learning the different wines and generally prefers to start with the sweeter wines and you hear, "Oh that's a good one, what kind of wine is this?"
The social wine taster (this is me) will know the different wines, will have a preference to different wines and wineries, but will still drink everything else. You will hear these type comments from the social wine taster, "Oh, I like that wine, I was hoping you'd have it tonight," and, "No thanks, I don't like Syrah, I'll just taste the Pinot again." And maybe even, "If you don't want the rest of that, I'll finish it."
Then there are (in my opinion) at least two levels of the expert wine taster. These guys know their stuff, where the grapes come from, when they are harvested, how long the wine should age, etc. This is what you overhear with the expert wine tasters, "It's aging well. I think it'll be good in about ten years." Ten years? Yeah right. Like I can let a bottle of wine sit in my house for ten years. Good luck with that! The expert wine taster will comment on the hint of oak and rosemary in the wine giving it a slight woody flavor with a fruity finish. They may even refer to the wines they dislike as 'swill'. Which I don't believe is an actual technical term of wine description.
K'Syrah seemed to cater to the newbie and social drinker, at least on the wine tasting event I attended. Much like it's counterpart, Salut!, K'Syrah is a little wine shop with weekly wine tasting events on Friday nights. The wine tastings are ten dollars for a flight (a flight is a taste of each one of the wines from the selection for the evening) and twenty-five dollars for dinner. We didn't have the dinner the night I went however, a friend of mine and her husband have previously gone for dinner and were able to buy a bottle of wine off the shelf (at the store price, not a restaurant price, so it is a better deal) and drink it with dinner.
Check out the link for K'Syrah and enjoy!