IT'S Bordeaux night for the clutch of girlfriends who call themselves the Drinkettes. In the back room at 17th Street Cafe in Santa Monica a long table is jammed with wine glasses ready for the women, who arrive for dinner at 7 o'clock, each with a bottle of Bordeaux in hand. In moments, the wine tasting is in full swing.
Not that all of these women are wine geeks. Half of the Drinkettes are there to catch up on the gossip while others, who have brought their own deep-bowl wine glasses, are furiously swirling sniffing, sipping and writing copious tasting notes.
"It's about connecting with each other when our busy lives make it easy to lose touch," says Janel Dreeka, the group's founder and leader. "And it's fun to discover the nuances of wine, to appreciate the seduction and sensuality of wine with friends."
Just as book groups have helped make enjoyment of good books a shared experience, tasting groups remind us that wine is best sipped with friends. It is especially true in California where so many casual wine drinkers have visited winery tasting rooms and where wine shops host tastings for novice drinkers and formal wine classes abound. Learning about wine with a small group of intimates may be the most enjoyable way to improve your wine IQ.
Setting up a wine tasting group is a lot like organizing a book group. Here's how to gather friends together to explore wine, allowing your group's preferences and predilections to guide the structure and the content. The good news is that wine isn't Proust. Tastings are allowed to swerve into pure hedonism without apology.
Tasting and talking
THE Drinkettes' monthly tasting group is the result of a promise among half a dozen schoolmates to stay in close touch. The group doubled in size as other friends gravitated to the wine-centric evenings.
When it's time to discuss the wine, everyone chimes in, offering opinions and voting for her favorite wines. The group does the tasting in a series of flights of three wines each, poured blind, which means the bottles are disguised in numbered paper bags. Appetizers arrive during the first flight, and by the time everyone has had a taste of each of the bottles and discussed her preferences, dessert is on its way.
Getting a wine tasting group going and keep it going when no one knows much about wine is a matter of organization, say the pros. A smart way to start is to decide on the style for your tasting, set a theme for the wines, then agree on a budget.
