Montauk Club

Our usual wine class attendees may have found their favorite red so far as we began our second year on February 21 reaching into the Old and New Worlds of merlot and cabernet sauvignon. We began our tour this month comparing a 2003 Chateau Brun-Despagne Heritage from the Bordeaux region in France (13% alcohol) with [...]

The red-wine fanatics in our wine class were skeptical as we explored Old World (i.e. France) and the New World (in this case, California) white wines on January 17, but they were in for a surprise. And the white-wine enthusiasts, of course, were in heaven.We began our trip this month with a 2005 Chateau de [...]

Our wine class continued our world travels on December 20 skipping back and forth between the Old World (i.e. Europe) and the New World (in this case, Washington and California). We expected to find subtlety in the Old World wines compared to boldness in the New World styles. And, boy did we! We started out [...]

Our November 29 class took us from the Burgundy region of France to Sonoma Valley and on Southern Australia as we continued trying to distinguish between wines grown in cool or moderate vs. warm regions of the world. This time we definitely found a contrast between the 2005 Josephine DuBois Grande Reserve Chardonnay from Burgundy [...]

Do you believe we went from Germany to California to New Zealand in one evening! And we did some fine sipping along the way, too. On October 25, we tried our hand at distinguishing between wines grown in cool vs. moderate regions of the world. We started out comparing a 2006 Nikki Dry Riesling from [...]

You may remember that many of our regulars couldn’t make it to our first spice tasting on July 19, and because we thought it so much fun, we decided to have it again on September 20. This time, I remembered to bring samples of nine actual spices that we could use to compare with the [...]

Yes, our May [June] 21 wine class was all about butter and grass. What the #!%% does that have to do with wine you ask? Well we actually tasted those flavors in the four wines we tried. We had a non-buttery 2005 Beaujolais Blanc, Appellation Beaujolais Controlee from France and buttery 2005 Reaction Chardonnay from [...]

There’s a rule of thumb that more alcohol contributes to a fuller body. Well, as a living example of that maxim, I could have told you that without demonstrating it with a wine tasting, but then, what fun would that have been? At our class on May 17, we explored body types again with a [...]

We had another good turnout at the fourth gathering in the monthly series of wine classes at the Club on Thursday, April 19. To start off, we discovered that, while the word oaky does not appear in spell-check, it definitely appears in smell-check and taste-check. We learned this by comparing a 2004 Les Caillottes Pouilly [...]

We had a great turnout at the third gathering in the monthly series of wine classes at the Club on Thursday, March 15. Crisp and dry humor abounded as we learned about the difference between sweet and dry wines as well as crisp and not-so-crisp. To demonstrate these styles, we tried a 2005 Kendall-Jackson Riesling [...]