21st October 2022: Wine Tasting Challenge led by Rob Evison

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The event was held at St Saviour Church Hall running7pm until 9pm. It was hosted by Rob Evison whose career was wine making in South Africa and Zimbabwe.  

 

While the challenge wass primarily focussed on red wine, for those who preferred a non-alcohol option, the tasting challenge included Flavours of Elderflower" as an alternative. 

 

Rob emphasised that this was a tasting Challenge; not a test to find out how experienced or accomplished individuals were at differentiating good from bad wine or identifying different styles of wine. Participants didn't even necessarily have to like wine (in fact the first such event Rob held many years ago was actually won by a pregnant teetotaller!!) Rather, it was a fun exercise challenging one to see how well they could remember or recognise tastes, smells and visual clues.

 

After a short explanation on how to taste wine and what characteristics to look for, Rob explained how to use his tasting sheet to help record impressions of six named wines (or elderflower-flavoured drinks) tasted one after the other. Thereafter participants were challenged to identify three of those six wines presented  'blind' using the tasting notes to help. 

 

During the evening Rob gave a very entertaining resume of his life in wine and managed the attendees extremely well. As the evening progressed the participants grew more boisterous as Rob had predicted. The winner of the competition, getting all three wines correct in the blind tasting was Colin Isenman. He received his prize of wine glasses to enthusistic applause.

We all agreed it had been an extremely informative and enjoyable evening. 

Thankyou Rob.