Wine tasting is of course fun and interesting. You can put 8 to 12 wines at random on the table, taste them, take notes and talk about them. You can practice your tasting skills, develop the vocabulary of aromas and flavours or simply decide whether you like a wine or not. But to really get to know a wine, region or grape and to be able to appreciate it more in the long run, wine tasting within a certain theme is recommended. And you can fill in that theme entirely yourself. Below we give a few suggestions for a theme of a wine tasting.
The focus is on one grape variety, which allows you to get to know the uniqueness of the grape. Compare different price ranges, ages or vinification methods to gain insight into the world of this grape.
During a tasting with the theme ‘region’, you only taste the wines that are typical for this region. If you want to delve deeper into a region to recognize the specific terroir in the wine, divide the region into subregions, for example 'Bordeaux Left Bank' and 'Bordeaux Right Bank'. Or choose to only do the red wines from a region during one tasting, then save the white for next time.
You can classify wines into certain taste styles, such as 'fresh white', 'rosé', 'powerful red' or 'aromatic and spicy' and dedicate the theme to that. What makes a wine powerful or what gives a wine finesse? The level of residual sugar is also an interesting topic, where you look for the differences; how does this wine get its residual sugars and what does that do to the wine? Compare an Eiswein with a Sauternes. Bubbles are also a grateful and especially festive theme. A tasting with only Champagnes is of course a huge treat. Moreover, also quite expensive. So choose a variety of bubbles, from Prosecco to Champagne, to learn the differences and similarities.
Or, 'Old World” next to 'New World.” Compare a Bordeaux blend from California to a classic Bordeaux. Or a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand to a Sancerre from the Loire. Look for differences in terroir or vinification methods that affect the wine.
Seek out wines from cool climates. These can be wines that sit just above the 50th parallel or wines from vineyards that are very high. Compare these wines with similar wines (grape varieties, age) that come from warmer microclimates.
Play the sommelier and taste combinations of wine and food to see how they support each other. In addition to a specific dish, you taste different matching wines to perhaps arrive at wonderful, less classic combinations. Cheese, meats, but also chocolate or oriental dishes can form the basis for selecting wines for such a tasting.
To understand wines that are made according to biodynamic or organic methods, it is fun to taste only biodynamic or organic wines. Some background information, how the wine was created, is interesting. What do these ideas about making wine do to the wine in the glass?
Natural wines are popular with a young audience in big cities like Amsterdam, Berlin and Barcelona. These wines are made without too much intervention by the winemaker. They are usually made from organic grapes and are not filtered or clarified and they contain very little sulphites. The taste style can vary considerably. These unusual natural wines are also called 'funky'. Very nice to discover during a wine tasting.
Be price-conscious and see which wines are the best option if you are in a financial crisis. You can also compare wines from different supermarkets, for example.
Instruct your wine friends who also happen to be film lovers to first watch films such as Sideways, Bottleshock, Somm or The Red Obsession. And during the tasting, instruct them to match the wine to the correct film.
In a vertical tasting, you taste one wine from a specific winery from different years. If you are also aware of the weather conditions of those years, you will also know where the differences in the wines come from. A horizontal tasting is a tasting with a wine from different producers from one year. Make the scale smaller by choosing producers from a specific region.
Pack the bottles so that the contents and the label remain unknown; aluminum foil works well if there are no wine bags. And then try to draw a conclusion about the wine based on the wine. Without being influenced by the label, you can make statements about, not necessarily to the last decimal point, for example the climate where the wine comes from, wood or no wood maturation, age, grape variety, country or for the fanatics among us, the winery. For beginners it is nice to give a number of starting points, for example
Orange wine (27) 
Fresh (89) 
Light (35) 
Rosé (14) 
Aromatic (20) 
Medium (98) 
Sparkling (27) 
Ripe (70) 
Full-bodied (100)