There's a bewildering and beguiling around of grapes in the world of wine – but the variety on the other end of the glass is almost comically narrow. Let me show you how with a simple game I concocted, 'Wine Tasting Bingo' or as it rhymes with Merlot, "Wingo" je suppose.
The aim of the game is simple. While you are swirling your glasses in unison, see if you can tick of the attendee cliché bingo list. First to 100 points win [who'd have thought 100 points would be sought after by a purple pager I hear guffaws from the back]
The first five are the easiest to spot and you get five points for each of the following – first up there's 'The Henry'. A rotund gentlemen with rosacea who's arrived clearly having already enjoyed a 'few' glasses with his four lunch 'somewhere proper'. If you can get close to one, you're in for a chance of snagging another one at the same time too – use of the word 'Claret' to describe Bordeaux in the style of an antiquated General from the East India Company. Next up as you gaze around the room at your c-conspirators on the journey through wine you need to keep an eye out, or should I say nose out for #3 ‘Panther’ – the over-zealous, nasal assaulting use of Eau de Toilette. These can appear both as dark shirt wearing bejewelled lothario, or, the 'half a tonne of hair-spray Hetty' that after having put a hole in the o-zone securing the beehive precedes to put a sizable dent in your nasal cavity with perfume too.
Once the chit-chat starts to loosen you'll need to be on your guard to secure the ten pointers. 'Tiny Tim' is the mention of a producer with miniscule yields near impossible to source production. A bonus point is then awarded for subsequent brinksmanship as to who they know who produces less. You know the conversation that's something like wine's equivalent of the four Yorkshireman sketch. "Only makes six thousand cases? Pah! I know this producer who makes 6,000 bottles… 6,000 bottles? That's practically mass market. Right, well I know a winemaker, who produces in a shed, from a solitary bushvine, in a township in the Western Cape, and only sells to people who people with whom he climbed Kilimanjaro in the past 12 months.. Bush vine you say? That'd be a dream compared to this one…" And so on.
If you're lucky this then dovetails perfectly into the recommendation of a producer that is 'just like' Montrachet, but in fact priced like Malgousia. Spot 'Bargain Burgundy' for 5 points.
As the business of tasting commences, ‘Generation Game’ are the points awarded to a mention of the generational lineage of the winemaking through the family, plus a bonus point for every 5th generation (At this stage you’ll find Antinori tastings are always popular). Next up there’s ten points for ‘Carry-on tasting” where for a member of the party drinking from the wrong glass or in the wrong order, ensuing furrowed brows, confusion, panic and the inevitable question “So wait, is this this the 2009 or the 2012?” Then there’s ten for the wine merchant helping themselves to a little extra 'soupcon' of wine during tasting and a further ten for an unsuccessful spittoon venture, with a bonus point awarded for the ornate water jug being inadvertently cross-purposed as the spittoon ‘Specsavers’.
Once you’ve made it this far it’s time to up your sight to the prize at hand and try to snag the 15 pointers. These require the heady mixture of an emboldening of confidence through the first glasses, combined with the dangerous mixture of some wine phrases/ knowledge buried deep inside.
Use of the words ‘minerality’ or ‘saline’ gets you 15, plus a bonus point if there’s a scoff at the table and ensuing debate as to what exactly either constitutes. Then there’s 15 points on offer for a discussion around pre-phylloxera vines and rootstocks and whether you really can taste the difference.. which dovetails beautifully onto the magic word ‘provenance’ for a bonus point too.
Last but not least my two favourites of the entire list. 15 points for ‘Elixir’ - A question on the correlation between hangovers and a process within wine making (sulphites/ tannins/ being organic et al) with a bonus point on offer when the joke is made “Well I guess I can have another glass then”. Biodynamics can be lucrative – 15 points for a debate on the subject and it’s efficacy, with a bonus point available for a producer who adheres it but isn’t certified owed to the ‘draconian’ requirements, and another point for the subsequent furore into drinking to the calendar too.
Ah! And of course I almost the forgot the oldest one in the vineyard – a gentleman in red trousers.
I know what you're dying to ask, have I ever got Win-Go? Well, I came aching close to a full house last time out at tasting of wines from the Hemel-En-Aarde valley. Achingly close, and stood next to the 10 point yielding sizzled gentleman gently swaying in the corner, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a glimpse of some strident scarlet strides.
Mine.
Anyone else fancy a game?