My 3rd Annual Ladies Only Wine Tasting

Every year, I invite my closest friends, family, neighbours, coworkers and colleagues to my home for a fun night of wine tasting. The caveat: you must be female! For whatever reason, this has proved to be an extremely popular event and the group seems to grow every year. The first year I did it, we had an intimate group of 10 or so women. By the second year, word had spread and it jumped to 30 women. This year the number came close to nearly 50 women! I live in a small post-war time bungalow so suffice it to say my house was full!

This year's crew.  Can you spot the butler?

Typically I wouldn't advise having this many people for a wine tasting as it is far too loud, people are distracted and lack focus and it is overall incredibly hard to coordinate. However, this year I tried out a format that seemed to worked brilliantly.

This year's theme was "cheap and cheerful", and I had every lady bring a bottle of wine I'd previously assigned that cost no more than $15. We had a lineup of 6 wines from around the world:

Yes, that is Yellowtail and Barefoot. Let me explain. 

My goal in including Yellowtail and Barefoot was to show my guests that they don't need to buy mass produced, poor quality wine when they are looking for a "cheap" bottle. I wanted to show them there are infinitely better quality wines at the same price, and sometimes even cheaper, that don't taste like swill. I was hoping in the blind tasting they would agree with me and discover some new wines they could buy instead. This tasting sheet was supplied for them:

I conducted the tasting in groups of 8, at a table I had set up in my kitchen. The remaining guests mingled and sipped on wine served by my butler:

Shout out to Dan Paddock for doing an amazing job and winning over the ladies :)

It took a few hours to get through the whole group. I included a portion on the tasting sheet for them to indicate their favourite and least favourite. These were the results:

Favourite: A tie between La Casona Monastrell (Spain) and Yellowtail Shiraz (Australia)

Least Favourite: Periquita (Portugal)

So, unfortunately my hope for the ladies to taste Yellowtail and Barefoot blind and realize how incredibly bad they actually are, somewhat failed. The good news is that the tie was with an excellent quality Monastrell from Southern Spain, which showed that not everyone's palate was veered towards a mass produced fruit bomb. It made me laugh that the least favourite was the Periquita, as this wine happens to be one of my most favourite good value wines. I keep a case of it stocked in my house at all times. Alas, I guess we all have different preferences :). 

A big thank you to all the ladies who attended and all the help I received along the way. 

I am already looking forward to the 4th annual!

Cheers,

Lola