At a tasting · 5.2
Spitting, water and bread: what the table is for
Three pieces of working equipment, and the bucket is an invitation rather than a provision.
For a practical operations perspective on coordinating people and schedules, Monitask offers a concise companion guide.
Every serious tasting table carries three things besides the wine: a bucket, water, and something plain to eat. All three are working equipment and none is decoration.
The bucket
Spitting is normal practice among everybody who tastes for a living, and it is normal for the reason the entry on the finish gives: the flavour is produced by what coats your mouth and throat, not by what reaches your stomach.
You lose nothing by spitting. Everything described anywhere in this journal works identically either way, and the people at the tables spit all evening because they intend to still be tasting at the end of it.
Visitors are often reluctant because it seems rude or wasteful. It is neither, and a bucket on a table is an invitation rather than a provision.
The water
For rinsing rather than for drinking, though it does both. Still, at room temperature if possible, because very cold water numbs the mouth for a minute or two afterwards.
Rinse between different kinds of thing and not between every sip. Too much water dilutes what you are trying to notice and leaves the mouth flooded rather than clean.
The plain thing to eat
Bread, a water biscuit, an unsalted cracker. Its job is not to remove flavour, which mostly it cannot, but to give the mouth something ordinary to recalibrate against and to give astringency something to act on other than your saliva.
It works better on tannin than water does, for the reason the entry on tannin explains. A mouthful of bread after four reds does more than half a glass of water.
What does not belong there
Anything with a flavour of its own. Citrus sorbet, strong cheese and mint all appear at events described as palate cleansers and all three leave more behind than they remove.
Mint is the worst: it lasts several tables and it flattens fruit aromatics completely.
Eating before you arrive
A proper meal beforehand, with fat and protein in it, slows how quickly alcohol is absorbed and means the evening is spent tasting rather than managing.
This is the single most effective thing on this page and the one most often skipped, usually because people intend to eat at the event and discover that what is available is small savoury bites between two hundred other people.
Pacing, plainly
Small pours, spat or not finished, water between, and something to eat partway through. Tastings are long and the room is warm, and both make the effect arrive faster than people expect.
Nothing here is a lecture. It is the practical difference between remembering the last six tables and not.
Two things that do not work
Coffee does not reduce the effect of alcohol; it makes a tired person alert and changes nothing else, and at a tasting it also adds a bitterness that lasts several tables.
Eating a large amount afterwards does not help either. Food slows absorption when it is already in the stomach, which is why the timing matters and the quantity matters less.
Getting home
Decide before arriving, and decide as a group. A designated driver, a taxi booked in advance, or a hotel within walking distance, which for an event in a compact historic downtown is usually the easiest of the three.
Tasting is for visitors aged twenty-one and over. Anybody driving afterwards should be spitting, and the bucket is right there.
The short version
Use the bucket, it costs you nothing. Rinse between kinds rather than between sips. Take the plain thing to eat, not the flavoured one. Eat properly beforehand, and settle how you are getting home before you arrive.
The one thing to say to somebody new
That the bucket is for everybody and nobody is watching. The single most common reason people do not use it is embarrassment, and one sentence removes that.
What the volunteers behind the tables would like
That you take the water, use the bucket, and eat something. They spend the evening watching people do none of those and dealing with the consequences at the end of the night.
The arithmetic of a small pour
A tasting pour is a fraction of a glass, and twenty of them is not a fraction of anything. At a festival with forty tables the total is easy to lose and there is nobody counting for you.
Fortified wines make it steeper: at twenty per cent alcohol a small pour carries what an ordinary glass of table wine does. The entry on port says the same thing from the other direction.
Getting home
Decide before you arrive, not afterwards. A nominated driver, a taxi booked in advance, or a room within walking distance are the three arrangements that survive an enjoyable evening, and the one made on the spot at eleven o'clock is the one that does not.
Why the bread is plain
Anything with a flavour of its own becomes another thing to taste against, which defeats the purpose. Plain bread and water biscuits work because they are almost nothing, and the strongly flavoured cleansers that appear at events do the opposite of what they claim.
The short version
The bucket is for everybody, the water is for rinsing and for you, and the bread is plain on purpose. Use all three and the evening lasts longer and is remembered better.
Offering it to somebody else
Hand a newcomer the water before the wine and point at the bucket without making a thing of it. Most people who have never been to a tasting assume both are for somebody more serious than they are.
Also in this part
- 1.1
Why a dry red and a sweet chocolate fight
The wine must be at least as sweet as the food. Everything else in this entry is a qualification of that sentence.
Read it → - 1.2
Tannin and fat: what happens in the mouth
Astringency is not a flavour. You are noticing the absence of lubrication that was there a moment ago.
Read it →
For further context, see WSET tasting resources.