On a recent tasting trip to the worth-visiting Eberle winery in Paso Robles, some friends and I took one of their VIP Cave Tours. The basic premise is that you can taste for free, but for $20 a head you get 2 hours undivided time with an expert, a great tour full of information about the entire process of winemaking, from planting/growing/harvesting all the way up through aging and bottling. You also get to taste 10 wines (or a few more, if you are friendly enough) with lots of good information to go along with them. I get the feeling that they do a good job of targeting the presentation to each group that’s on the tour — so if you are ‘newbies’, you get a lot of good basic information (how to swirl/sniff/sip/spit) up to more sophisticated questions — the nature of oxygen permeation through cork, and how it contributes (or does not contribute) to the aging process of a wine.

I did ask our (very capable) guide Gaston (don’t let the name fool you — he was Argentinian, not French!) one question which I thought I had him dead to rights on — do we drink wine with food (partially) because certain flavor compounds are alcohol-soluble?

Apr 5, 08:22 PM − Posted in Food