Tasting Room - This Has Got To Be One Of The Best Ways To Experience and Discover New Wines

Tastingroom.com is this very cool site that offers small sample bottlings of top wines. For the price of a single bottle you can taste six. We ordered the "A Taste Adventure ... Reds for Picnics" sampler and tasted them with a Vietnamese influenced picnic dinner, grilled pork tenderloin and all the fixings. 

All the wines were good, two we loved, two we thought were very good, the last two we would pass on, they would have paired better with another dish, but it was good to know what they were like.

The whole concept, the way Tasting Room sells wine, I think is fantastic.

On the website there is a vast selection of carefully chosen wines. You can pick from dozens of sample packs that all have some interesting theme.

Once you order your wine arrives in a realy nice box like this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Open it up and inside are materials that describe the wine and a place to record your tasting notes.

A great gift idea.

I had not heard tastingroom.com before, then Amy Payne, a Certified Sommelier who is with them, asked me to check it out the site and try out their service. I was impressed by the site so I said sure. She suggested I try the Picnic Sampler, probably because she noticed I was into interesting wines.

Tasting Room offers over 35 different samplers, everything from "A Taste Adventure ... Sweeter Wines, The Best Sweet Wine From California" to "Killer Grillers, A Wine Sampler of Robust Reds for BBQ Season."

Once you find wines you really like you can order full bottles at good prices.

I liked the Picnic Sampler, not only were they great reds for typical picnic food, they were all California wines of grapes not typically found in that state. I would have never have had the opportunity to taste these wines.

The 2008 Halter Ranch "Cotes de Paso" Paso Robles Red Blend went especially well with this dinner,  Vietnamese Pork Tenderloin. It is a true southern Rhône-style blend of Grenache, Mourvèdre, Syrah, Counoise and Cinsault but from southern California.

 

Check the site here, www.tastingroom.com I know you will like it.

One problem, tastingroom.com will not be shipping into New Jersey for a couple of months. Our NJ government in the way again. We will let you know when NJ shipping comes available.