Mass wine tasting

Wine tasting table
Photograph by Melody Flammger

I attended a tasting held at my local Lilac Festival.  For some reason, when I attended this tasting I thought of previous wine tasting events where there was plenty of room to move about and politely converse about the wines we were trying.  At previous events, ticket prices were higher, venues were indoors and a different crowd was present.

First of all, this event was a smaller part of a larger outdoor festival held in one of the larger city parks.  The tastings themselves occurred in a large tent and tables lined the edges of the tent with one larger one in the center.  The center winery was Casa Larga Vineyards (this made sense because they largely sponsored the event).  Upon entering the tent, my original assumptions were shattered.

For $5 at this event, you got a tasting glass and basically unlimited tastings- IF you could get to the tastings.  The problem was that many people would stand around the tables for long after they'd tried their samples instead of moving along.  This led to overcrowding and people were reaching over others just to try to get a sample.  In many areas of the tent, it was impossible to pass easily on to the next table.  The area became so crowded with people that no one could easily move.  I hadn't anticipated having so much trouble even moving around.

Wine tasting table
Photograph by Melody Flammger

Instead of taking tasting notes, my friend Kat and I focused on collecting winery brochures so we would know which wineries had attended and could refer back to their websites if we liked anything we had tried.  We tried the wines that sounded interesting or that we hadn't had before rather than doing a complete tasting at any one winery.  If we had tried to get a whole lineup in, someone would have pushed us out of the way.

This really opened my eyes to what can happen if there isn't a good crowd management system in place.  There was one security guard stationed at an exit to the tent, but no ropes for lines and no apparent organization.  We noted quickly to each other the difference between an event like this and an event for serious wine drinkers.  Unfortunately, what could have been a very nice event for serious wine appreciators it had become the ultimate drunk fest.  After all, if you can get unlimited samples with your $5 entry fee, you wanted to get your monies worth and that was done by trying as many wines as possible- sometimes even multiple times.


We managed to have a good time despite the event not being what we expected.  We ultimately decided that if we're going to go to an even where there is a massive tasting such as this one that we'd have to keep a notebook to have an idea of what we tried, or to abandon trying to gather tasting notes for each wine.  We made a mental note of some of the wines we liked but a list may even have been better.

Have you had a mass tasting experience?  What was it like?