Are massive wine tastings valuable; Matt Kramer: "Yes" and "No".

[Bob Ross]

Jenise, I should mention that it was St. Innocent that for one ridiculous hour was not a "worthy" Pinot Noir now that I had attended six Grand Burgundy Tastings.

There was something really wrong with that picture. :-)

Regards, Bob

[James Dietz]

We do a lot of big wine tastings here in the OC (Siduri one month, Kosta Browne another, Loring and AP Vin another, Melville, any Pisoni vineyard).. we sometimes have 40 wines for 20 people. I just find it all too overwhelming now. I like trying a few I haven't had or want to revisit, but to try to get thru them all is no fun at all. I lose interest.. I can't discriminate after a while. I like 1 or 2 or 3 bottles maybe, that I can contemplate, as others have suggested..

Big is not better, though Jenise and others may disagree.. at least not when it comes to wine tastings!!!

[Tom N.]

"They are fun for the people and you tend to meet really wonderful people at these events. I wonder if wine lovers generally aren't nicer on average than other people. At least at Grand Tastings?

Regards, Bob

Bob,

I think so. My brothers and I have gone to MoCool for the last 4 years. We have made some good friends. So good, that we always look forward to returning. We don't even have to ask each other if we want to go, we know we all do. Besides being nice people, the intense shared interest in wine makes everyone have something of interest to say and you don't have to look for common interests to communicate on a meaningful level. It also seems that virtually all wine lovers tend to be foodies, too and really savor the cuisine and how it matches with wine. Now that's my kind of people.

[Jenise]

I wonder if that's because she went to too many of them, Jenise, or some other reason. I know that I started to get into that mode over Burgundy

Bob, in part it's that. And the other part is that this person is naturally negative--looks for flaws first, and that goes for people, wine, everything. From what I can tell, the extravaganza environment reinforced what she was inclined to anyway. It's absolutely no fun to taste wine with her because nothing's ever good enough, and a whole room full of people like her would send me out into the halls screaming.

[Bob Ross]

That's interesting, Jenise. It's no fun tasting wine with people with that approach.

The Burgundy tastings that Johannes put on were a little different -- lots of different personalities, some very generous, some amazingly obsessed. One guy told me he got interested in Burgundy, ended up building a large wine storage facility with friends -- 18 bays, each of which would hold 4,000 cases of wine.

He started out reserving one bay for himself, but by the time construction was finished, had reserved three, and was dickering with another guy to retrieve a fourth.

I'm sure there were people there with your friend's attitude or approach, but I wouldn't hung around with them in any event.

Regards, Bob