On Thursday 21st November the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Great Britain organised an exclusive blind tasting evening for Patrons in collaboration with The Haciendas Club, members of the Chamber, at their venue by the riverside.
It was a chilly evening outside, but guests felt relieved when they got into the warm “Magister Room” where the tasting took place. There stood a big table set with The Haciendas brand artisan and organic produce and the wine selection that attendees would taste later on. Everything was immaculately laid out and arranged for the tasting to begin.
If you have not attended a blind tasting before, you might think your wine knowledge is passable, at least. However, once you have six glasses filled with different wine varieties and the only thing you can tell about them is “this is a red, a white or a sparkling”, or “this smells a bit stronger or sweeter”, then you realise you know nothing about it!
In fact, you can even be wrong altogether because it is the grape skin that confers the colour to the wine, so you can get a white coloured wine from dark grapes. After this experience, you might change your mind and accept wines are complex and begin to assume that getting to be a connoisseur requires care, attention, time and effort.
Lucy Mounter guided attendees throughout what turned out to be not only a wine but also a food tasting.
Once guests took their seats, Ms. Lucy Mounter, Brand Ambassador for The Haciendas Membership Club, began to introduce participants to what turned out to be an interesting journey around several Latin countries. Attendees had the chance to enhance their palate by tasting different flavours from Italy to Spain and flying over to Argentina. Not only did they taste them, they learned some techniques and clues to identify the grape variety (or varieties), origin, name of the wine and even how to get a close idea of its retail value!
The blind tasting was also presented as a quiz, so as to encourage guests to concentrate on the different aspects that make each wine unique. As speculation ensued amongst attendees a bottle of the house brand olive oil was also passed around the table for the participants to taste it while racking their brains in order to get some right answers about their wine tasting. In truth several attendees possessed some previous experience and good skills regarding wine culture and were able to share them with rest of the guests.
Attendees focused on the talk and took the quiz very seriously!
We would like to thank The Haciendas Club for kindly providing our Patrons with this exclusive and flavourful event, and hope attendees enjoyed it. Should you wish to learn more about the Spanish Chamber exclusive “Patron’s Club” and the rest of the advantages this membership brings to companies that join as Patrons, do not hesitate to contact us. You can also keep posted for future activities by subscribing to our newsletter or browsing our Upcoming Events section on our website www.spanishchamber.co.uk
