Wine Tasting Directions

WINE TASTINGS BLOG REPORTS

Another weekly assignment where you can go out to free wine tastings at local wine shops (not

wineries!) on the weekends and write up your [extensive] tasting notes on your blog. You can do

these for 5 different wines each week (Sunday midnight to the following Sunday at midnight). You

need to include a photo of the wine label (either taken yourself or found online) the name, variety,

region, country, year, price, the winery/magazine review (found online) or whatever information

they give you at the store, and your personal review of the wine, and if you had it with food or

not.

Format for the wine tasting report:

Title: Tasting - "Wine name"

In the body of the blog:

•Photo

•Name

•Variety

•Region

•Country

•Year

•Price

•Shop/wine critic/winery review (these will be cross-referenced with info provided by the shops to

us)

•Your review (this is in your own words and opinions, it IS NOT a re-wording of the provided shop/

critic review)

•If you had it with food or not and if you did how it effected the wine.

example: http://kpritcha-wine.blogspot.com/2012/01/tasting-adrian-fog-pinot-noir.htmlEach wine review is worth 3 points, and you can do up to 5 per week, for all 13 weeks of the semester, so it is possible for you to earn a whopping 195 points...and more importantly, you will

have an awesome log of all your wine experience to carry with you into the future.

To earn the points, you must have posted your tasting notes for up to 5 wines EVERY WEEK! You

cannot wait until the last weeks of class to post 50 wines at one time! The TA's will grade your

blog sites several unannounced times during the semester, so retro-actively post-dating your blog

entries for weeks earlier won't cut the mustard either.

And this shizzle is free too! Here is the list of places that I know of that do free tastings, usually on

Fridays and Saturdays although there are many other special wine tastings events that occur

sporadically. Check their sites for times and dates of tasting, and even sign up on their email lists

to get up-to-date info all semester:

Vintage Cellar, Blacksburg http://www.vintagecellar.com/

Gourmet Pantry, Blacksburg http://www.gourmetpantryonline.com/

Oasis World Market (mostly sake and beer) http://www.oasisworldmarket.com/

Mr. Bill's Wine Cellar, Roanoke http://www.mrbillswinecellar.com/Mr._Bills/Tasting_Schedule.html

In addition, I think that maybe Kroger's does tastings every now and again (can someone confirm

this?) as does the ABC store (liquor only), and there is a wine bar at 622 North

http://www.622north.com/ at which there are many wines by the glass...but they do not have free

tastings. They are also an awesome restaurant that you could utilize for the Wine Dinner Blog

Report as well if you like, which is next: