Appreciation of wine is a very personal experience. What you may enjoy, your partner may not. There is no universal tasting, but rather than rush out and buy bottles that you may regret later, there is another way. This is via the popular wine tastings.
Now there are the formal wine tastings, complete with spittoons and water to drink so that you are not being influenced by the previous wine. It is from tastings like this that the wine connoisseurs grade the vineyards’ wines and you can (almost) take it as read that a wine with a score over 90 is a “good” wine.
Antonello Passa, GM of the Royal Cliff Hotels Group, welcomes deVine club members and guests to the grand celebration.
Another style of wine tasting, as used so successfully by the Royal Cliff, is to have different wine suppliers dotted around a room (in this case the Grand Ballroom) plus food stations so that the wine tasting members of the deVine Wine Club are safe to drive home after the two hour tasting session.
The food stations were, as always, under the watchful eye of executive Chef Walter Thenisch, and the range and standard was without flaw. I have mentioned before that Walter, with his years of experience could so easily just re-run something he produced years before – but he doesn’t. He is as up to date as a young chef with his first toque ready to conquer the world left to him by Escoffier himself.
Dr Iain Corness, a founding member of the deVine Club reminisces about the days when it all began.
For me, the wines which took my fancy included an amazingly named Verdejo Sauvignon Blanc Sexy & Cool Bodegas Arúspide, Tierra de Castilla, represented by BNK Pattaya Wine complete with some lovely young sexy and cool representatives.
It was also impossible to go past the Wine Dee Dee stand with the Stonefish Merlot 2010. I backed up a couple of times for that, but on the third attempt at indulgence, they had run out, and there were eight bottles originally!
Bangkok Beer and Beverage had an amusing Gérard Bertrand Crémant de Limoux AOP, which I also enjoyed more than once.
With the DeVine Wine Club members circulating around the ballroom gave everyone the opportunity to compare their choices with those of others, and of course there was a wide disparity, as there should be with such a personal thing as wine appreciation.
For those who were unable to attend, I have attached the list of wines and suppliers. Read Pattaya Mail and you won’t miss the next DeVine Wine Club event.
