Welcome to Betty's Wine Musings, where you'll get fabulous wine tasting tips and wine tasting notes, discover personalized wines, and more! Whether you are a wine veteran or just getting started, there’s always something more to explore about the wonderful world of wine.
Three cheers for winter! Don’t you love having the rain come down so that you don’t need to water your lawn? Don’t you love having an excuse to get nice and cozy in front of the TV on a Friday night? Don’t you love the healthy air? Most importantly, don’t you love winter wines? Winter wines are what we’ll be talking about today. [Read more…]
I am delighted to share this blog written by Daniel Stauffer, a devout cigar enthusiast. Please see his bio at the end of this article. The ritual of selecting, cutting, and lighting a fine cigar beautifully parallels the ceremonious way that wine is poured, swirled, and tasted. This reverence that enthusiasts have for both makes each a natural fit when it comes to flavor pairing. Both offer a vast spectrum of complex flavor profiles and distinctive regional varieties. To help you find the right flavor combination between your wine and cigars, here are our top five red wine and cigar pairings.
At our Big Game party today (Cal won!!!), the host insisted that we not bring wine. When I got to his house, I saw that he had 12 bottles wrapped up for a blind tasting! Very interestingly, he put a lot of information on each bottle: the grape, the region, the year. Pretty much everything except for the brand. When we asked him why he did this, he said that he wanted us to focus on what we liked about each wine. As you can see from the title, after four hours of watching the game and tasting 9 wines, he did the great reveal. All the wines were Kirkland! Today we’re going to explore Costco’s Kirkland wines.
[Read more…]This past weekend, I had the pleasure of getting to know a wine bar in San Jose that I’d never been to, District Wine Bar on San Pedro Ave. In this blog, I’ll share my wine tasting experience with you. I hope it inspires you to check out this wonderful place.
Here’s what they say on their website: “Located in downtown San Jose, in the heart of San Pedro Square and just a few blocks from SAP Center, District brings together a menu of small, shareable plates, pizza and house-made charcuterie with one of the city’s most extensive and diverse wine and whiskey programs. The result is a one-of-a-kind tasting experience that you can share with friends and family in a vibrant and communal setting.
“We love big flavors at District. Come in to District and see what Executive Chef Bob Cina has on the menu today. Our dinner menu specializes in tasty and sharable small plates such as oysters on the half shell, Ahi Tuna Poke with taro chips, artisan style pizza and an associated variety of delicious charctuterie.
“What makes District stand out from the rest is that everything on the menu is made in-house from fresh, local and seasonally inspired ingredients. Come in today and pair one of our menu items with one of our many wines, whiskeys and cocktails.”
My friend Matt and I each enjoyed a flight of wines. I got the Wispy Whites, and he got the Earth, Wind and Funk. Okay, for starters, we loved the names of their flights – and the tastes of their flights. I’ll describe my flight in the next section. Matt loved his flight too.
Beyond the flights. We got French Fries and Patatas Gravas and have never tasted better potatoes in our lives. Yes, we OD’ed on potatoes, but we were in seventh heaven. I would go back there every day for those potatoes.
On top of the potatoes, we got to sit outside on a lovely patio, and we got served by a wonderful young man named Victor.
The Wispy Whites flight was great. Here’s what was in it:
Please check out District in San Jose. And if you think about it beforehand, please invite me 🙂
As an independent wine consultant with WineShop At Home, I absolutely enjoy bringing a taste of the Napa wine country home to you one sip at a time. Whether you simply love to drink wine, seek a special personalized wine gift, or are in search of a new wine jobs opportunity as a wine consultant, feel free to contact me for a truly unique wine tasting experience!
Last week I wrote an article called “Looking for a Great Side Gig?” where I talked about why you might enjoy becoming a wine consultant. In the article, I said that our wine consultants lead fun wine tastings in people’s homes and offices, giving guests the chance to try fantastic wines made by Napa winery WineShop At Home before they buy them. This week, I thought it would be fun to tell you about what a WineShop At Home wine tasting is. I’ll do this in a Q&A style, since you are likely to have many questions.
If hosting a wine tasting sounds like fun, let’s talk. If joining my team so you can lead wine tastings for others sounds like fun, let’s also talk. I’ll share my contact information at the bottom.
WineShop At Home is a Napa winery that doesn’t sell their wine retail or wholesale. Instead, they sell through independent wine consultants like me who lead private wine tastings in your home or office.
The standard tasting is 5 wines. But you can upgrade your tasting to have as many as 8 wines.
A typical tasting lasts 1 ½ to 2 hours.
A WineShop At Home wine tasting costs $40 (plus tax) for a 5-bottle tasting. You get about $150 worth of wine for $40! For additional bottles, the cost is higher.
Our goal is to sell you and your guests a lot of wine at the tasting. The $40 fee is a loss leader for us. Rest assured, I don’t hard sell. The wine does a good job of selling itself. This is really no different from going up to Napa to taste – only you get to do it in the comfort of your home. And each person doesn’t have to pay $20 at each winery J
WineShop At Home wines range in price from $16 to $45.
The ideal size for a tasting is 12 people. You can have as many as 18, but that means the sips are really small.
This is often the case for company tastings. With more people, I need more wine, and I would need to sell you the additional bottles at full price.
Everybody shows up at the same time. I get people to fill their plates with food. We then do introductions. Once we’ve done introductions, we start with sparkling wine. We then do whites followed by reds. With each wine, we talk about what we’re tasting and smelling and how we’re liking it. We try each wine with the different foods the host provides and figure out which pairings we like best. Very importantly, we do a lot of laughing. I even tell a few wine jokes.
I share my most important rule up front. I tell people not to yuck anybody’s yum. Why? If you’re the leader of the crowd and you don’t like a wine, you might embarrass other people who really like it. So I tell people to share their opinions gently.
When you decide you want to do a tasting, we come up with a date and talk about your wine preferences (sweet, drier, more red, more white, etc.). I then send you a coaching email with everything you need to get ready for your big event, including:
WineShop At Home tastings are simple and fun! And they don’t take a lot of prep. You just need some fun wine-loving friends and a few good hours. And your house doesn’t even need to be clean.
If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area and you’d like to book a tasting, please call me at 650-714-7009 or email me at betty@winetastingsandmore.com. If you’re in the United States and you’d like to join my team so that you can lead tastings for other people, please check out my Wine Business page and call or email me.
Cheers!
As an independent wine consultant with WineShop At Home, I absolutely enjoy bringing a taste of the Napa wine country home to you one sip at a time. Whether you simply love to drink wine, seek a special personalized wine gift, or are in search of a new wine jobs opportunity as a wine consultant, feel free to contact me for a truly unique wine tasting experience!
