A guided sommelier tasting — six wines, six terroirs, one evening.
A real sommelier doesn't taste differently — they pay attention more deliberately. The professional method has four movements: Look, Smell, Taste, Think. Each wine in this tasting takes you through all four. You don't need to memorise vocabulary; you need to slow down.
Tilt the glass against something white. Read the colour, the rim, the legs running down the bowl. Each tells you about ripeness, age, alcohol.
Sniff first without swirling — that's the first nose. Swirl, then sniff again. Aromas come in three layers: fruit (the grape), winemaking (the cellar), and age (the bottle).
A small sip. Move it across the whole mouth. Note five things: sweetness, acidity, tannin (in reds), alcohol, body. Then the flavours.
How long does the finish last? How does it balance? What did you actually feel? The honest answer beats the clever one — every time.
Always taste light to heavy: a powerful red kills the palate for a delicate white, but the reverse builds beautifully. Pull all whites from the fridge 20 minutes before, all reds 10 minutes into the fridge from room temperature.
Marlborough sits at the northern tip of New Zealand's South Island, where stony riverbed soils drain the relentless rain and sunlight bounces off the Pacific. Villa Maria blends two valleys: Awatere, cooler and alpine-influenced, gives lemongrass, jalapeño, and herbal lift; Wairau, warmer, gives ripe passionfruit, guava, grapefruit. Together they make the textbook Marlborough Sauvignon — pungent, room-filling, electric. The grapes are pressed gently and fermented cold in stainless steel to lock in those volatile aromatic compounds (called thiols and pyrazines) that you'll meet on the nose.
Tilt the glass at 45° over white paper. Look at the centre of the wine, then the rim where it meets the glass.
First, sniff without swirling — short little inhales. Then place the glass on the table, draw two tight circles with your wrist, and sniff again from a couple of centimetres away. Notice the difference.
Click any aroma you detect →
Take a small sip — about a teaspoon. Don't swallow yet. Roll it across your tongue, then draw a thin stream of air through your lips (it sounds rude — it's how aromas reach the back of your nose). Now swallow, and count silently: how many seconds until the flavour fades?
The Wittmann family has farmed in the village of Westhofen since 1663 — that's older than most countries. Philipp Wittmann took over in 2003 and is, alongside Klaus Peter Keller, considered the standard-bearer for the modern, dry Rheinhessen. The estate has been certified organic since 1990, biodynamic since 2004. The "100 Hügel" — one hundred hills — is named for the gently rolling limestone landscape around Westhofen. Riesling planted on this limestone gives wines of piercing minerality and longevity. The name "trocken" means dry: every gram of sugar fermented to alcohol. The wild-yeast fermentation in old, neutral oak barrels (the 1829 vaulted cellar still uses an 1890 cask) gives the wine its slight texture and salty grip — different from a stainless-steel Riesling, which would feel sharper.
Hold the glass against white. The colour is a fingerprint of grape and method.
Riesling is the most terroir-transparent white grape. What you smell is the limestone, almost literally.
Click any aroma you detect →
Take a sip slightly larger than the last wine. Hold it. Riesling has a famous tension between acidity and fruit — your job is to feel both at once.
Domaine Laroche has been making wine in Chablis since 1850 — but the cellars themselves are far older. The headquarters sit inside the Obédiencerie, a former monastery where the monks of Saint-Martin de Tours pressed grapes in the 9th century. That's a thousand years of continuous winemaking on the same stones. The estate now holds 90 hectares across the appellation, including significant Premier and Grand Cru parcels, and is converting fully to organic. Their winemaking philosophy is famously hands-off: "We don't make wine," says winemaker Régis Lemaître. "Each year we just need to do our job depending on what nature gives to us." Tonight's bottle is their entry-level village Chablis — but the limestone, the cellars, and the precision are the same as the grand crus. The 2025 was hand-harvested, fermented partly in stainless steel for purity, partly in old oak foudres (large neutral casks) for texture, and aged six months on its lees. The result is the textbook northern Burgundy Chardonnay: salty, mineral, electric.
Compare side-by-side with the Sauvignon glass.
This is where Chablis surprises new tasters. The fruit is restrained, almost shy — the minerality is the lead vocal.
Click any aroma you detect →
A small sip. This is the most "structural" of the three whites — feel its shape rather than its fruit. Laroche's village Chablis is more textured than a stainless-only Chablis thanks to the partial old-oak fermentation.
In 2003, Alain Graillot — a celebrated winemaker from Crozes-Hermitage in France's Northern Rhône — was on a cycling holiday in Morocco. He stopped at the Domaine des Ouled Thaleb, met the oenologist Jacques Poulain, and noticed the terroir reminded him of his own home: red-and-black clay over limestone, cool Atlantic breezes, 500 metres of altitude in the lee of the Middle Atlas mountains. The label on your bottle shows a tandem bicycle — that's why. Together they founded the Tandem project in 2005: a Moroccan Syrah made by a Rhône hand. Graillot died in 2022; his sons Antoine and Maxime now continue the work. Vines are 10–40 years old, hand-pruned in goblet form, no herbicides, organic. The wine ages partly in old oak — only 10% new — so the wood whispers rather than shouts. This is one of Africa's finest reds, and almost nobody outside France knows it.
Now we're in red-wine territory. Tilt the glass and look at the rim — the colour gradient from centre to edge tells you about age and grape.
Syrah is the most savoury of red grapes. Don't expect candy — expect spice cabinet, charcuterie, garrigue.
Click any aroma you detect →
First sip: the texture. Reds add a new sensation — tannin. Tannin isn't a flavour, it's a mouth feel. It's the dry, grippy, slightly furry sensation on your gums and the inside of your cheeks. It comes from grape skins and seeds.
Malbec was born in Cahors, southwest France — but Argentina is where the grape became famous. Luján de Cuyo, just south of Mendoza city, is the historic heart of Argentine Malbec, and Casarena (the name combines casa and arena — "house" and "sand", honouring the sandy soils) farms four single vineyards across the Agrelo and Perdriel sub-zones. At nearly a kilometre above sea level, in the desert rain-shadow of the Andes, the vines see brutal sunshine by day and freezing winds by night. That extreme diurnal swing is the secret: it lets the grapes accumulate sugar (high alcohol, ripe fruit) and hold acidity (freshness). Snowmelt from the Andes provides irrigation. The wine is fermented with native yeasts and aged 10 months in French oak — enough to add complexity without burying the fruit. This is Malbec at its most poised: not a fruit bomb, not over-extracted.
Compare the colour to the Syrah you just had. They look similar at first — keep looking.
After the savoury Syrah, Malbec's nose feels almost sweet. There's an unmistakable plumpness to the fruit, lifted by floral and spice notes from altitude.
Click any aroma you detect →
A generous sip. Malbec's signature is the texture: tannins that are abundant but ripe and rounded — described as "velvet" or "plush" rather than "grippy".
The name Bonpas comes from "bonus passus" — Latin for "good passage". In 1318, Pope John XXII gave a fortified monastery on the road between Avignon and Rome to the Carthusian monks; their job was to keep watch over the pilgrims passing through. The walls still stand today, and so does the wine. Vacqueyras itself comes from the Provençal Vaqueiras, meaning "valley of stones" — and you'll see why on the label illustration. The vineyards sit at the foot of the Dentelles de Montmirail, a jagged limestone ridge that looks like lace teeth biting the sky. The soil is famous: galets roulés, large round riverbed pebbles dropped by ancient glacial floods. By day they soak up the Mediterranean sun; by night they radiate it back, ripening the grapes from below as well as above. Vacqueyras was promoted from Côtes-du-Rhône-Villages to its own AOC Cru in 1990 — putting it in the same elite tier as its more famous neighbour, Gigondas. The wine is mostly Grenache Noir (minimum 50% by appellation rules), with Syrah, Mourvèdre, and a touch of Cinsault. Tonight this is your closing wine — a warm, generous, garrigue-scented finale and the most powerful red of the night.
A reminder: this bottle was opened 40 minutes before serving. The contact with air has woken up the aromatic compounds — the wine should now be at its peak.
Vacqueyras has a famous aromatic signature: garrigue — the wild scrubland herbs of Provence. Think of crushing rosemary, thyme, lavender, fennel between your fingers under a hot sun. Beneath that, layers of dark fruit and spice unfold.
Click any aroma you detect →
A medium sip. Three (or four) grapes means three textures layered together — feel the wine evolve from front to back of the mouth.
You've travelled six terroirs in one evening — from a kiwi-scented Pacific bay to a sun-baked Provençal hillside, with stops in a German limestone hill, a fossil-shell Burgundy seabed, a Moroccan Atlantic plateau, and an Andean rain-shadow desert. Drink slowly. Argue gently. Take notes you'll laugh at next year.