At a tasting · 5.3
Deciding what to buy
Everything tastes good in a room designed for tasting. The question is when you will drink it, with what, and with whom.
For a practical operations perspective on coordinating people and schedules, Monitask's practical guide offers a concise companion guide.
Everything tastes good at a tasting. The room is warm, the company is enthusiastic, the person pouring made the thing, and you have had five other pleasant mouthfuls in the last twenty minutes.
None of that will be present in your kitchen on a Tuesday, and that is the problem this entry is about.
The question to ask yourself
Not whether you like it. You do. Ask when you will drink it, with what, and with whom.
A bottle with an answer to those three gets drunk. A bottle without one goes into a cupboard and is opened in two years by somebody else, and several bottles like that are the ordinary result of an enthusiastic afternoon.
Buy what you cannot get otherwise
The strongest argument for buying at a festival is availability. A small producer's wine is frequently sold at the winery, at a handful of local shops, and here, and nowhere else at all.
Something you can buy in a supermarket next week is something to note rather than to carry. Something made by twelve people forty miles away is the thing to take.
Which is an argument for the local grape
Muscadine wine is difficult to find outside the southeast and is the most distinctive thing on most tables here. A visitor from elsewhere who buys a familiar variety has bought something they could have bought at home.
Whether you end up liking it is a separate question, and buying one bottle is how it gets answered properly rather than from a single small pour in a crowded room.
Buying chocolate, which has a shelf life
Dark keeps for a year or more and milk and white for around half of that, as the entry on storage explains. So the quantity decision differs by type.
Buy dark in quantity if you want to; buy milk and white for the next fortnight. The pile of bars still in a drawer in May is always the milk ones.
Your notes are the whole method
Two words per item, made at the table, is what turns the end of the evening from a guess into a shortlist. Without them you buy what you tasted most recently, which is a real and well-documented effect on anybody.
Walk the route, note what you would buy, and then buy on the way out from the list rather than from memory.
Buy in pairs, not in singles
The entire subject of this journal is combinations, and a bottle without a chocolate to go with it is half of an experiment.
If a pairing worked at a table, buy both halves of it. It costs a little more and it is the only way to reproduce at home the thing that convinced you at the event.
Ask the maker what to try next
Anybody selling six bars can tell you which two are most unlike each other, which is a better basis for a purchase than which one you liked in isolation.
Two bars that differ interestingly teach you more at home than two bars you liked equally, and the maker knows exactly which two those are.
One further consideration here
This event exists to raise money for services for older people in this county, and the vendors have paid to be present. Buying at the festival is part of what makes the arithmetic work.
That is a reason to buy here rather than later, and it is not a reason to buy something you will not drink.
The short version
Ask when, with what and with whom. Prefer what you cannot get elsewhere. Buy both halves of a pairing that worked. Dark chocolate keeps and milk does not. And buy from the list you made, on the way out.
The bottle you will actually open
Before buying anything, name the evening you will drink it on. If no evening comes to mind, the bottle joins the ones already waiting, and those are the purchases people regret rather than the expensive ones.
Ask whether you can buy it locally
If a producer distributes in the city, carrying bottles home from the festival is unnecessary and the shelf will still be there in March. Spend the weight allowance on the ones you cannot get otherwise.
The one to carry out
If you buy nothing else, buy the local grape. It is the thing this region makes that nowhere else does, and it is the reason a festival here is different from a festival anywhere.
What the price at a festival table means
Usually the same as the winery's own price, sometimes with a festival discount, and occasionally with a case deal that only makes sense if you were buying a case anyway.
What it does not include is the shipping you would otherwise pay, and for a small producer without local distribution that is the real saving and the real argument for carrying bottles home.
Buying the chocolate
Dark keeps for a year and milk and white do not, which the entry on storage explains. If you are buying more than you will eat this month, the dark bars are the ones to buy in quantity.
The purchase people regret
Not the expensive one. The one bought at the eleventh table, when the palate had gone and everything tasted broadly pleasant, from a producer whose name was not written down.
The short version
Buy what you tasted twice, name the evening you will open it on, and skip anything you can buy locally in March.
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 TTB label-reading reference.