Today we held our first public Family Tasting and I am delighted to say it was a roaring success. We had 11 adults tasting 8 wines from across the Languedoc-Roussillon and 5 children, aged from 3 to 10, tasting 8 juices ‘blind’! Together they got to learn how to identify tastes and then whilst the adults learnt about the diversity of the wines of the region their children sampled a mix of ‘mono cépage’ and ‘assemblage’ fruit juices!

Although we have always said that children are welcome at our Tastings, and we have had several attend in the past, this was the first time that we had run an event where we actually catered for the kids. The 5 children were great fun, when it came to working out the 4 different tastes the 10 year old was on the ball and identified 3 immediately!

If you are thinking that wine tasting and children don’t mix, think again! Today the children were not only were encouraged to taste a range of flavours but also to think about what it was they were tasting. Maybe this is something they should introduce at school to encourage children to explore their palates and be more adventurous.

Whilst Matt and I talked the adults through the wines, the children tasted and coloured, and it was the adults that were noisy and rambunctious not their kids!!! It is worth noting that children have very defined palates, they have not yet destroyed them with strong flavours such as coffee, spice and cigarettes, and so they found ‘blind’ tasting a lot easier than we do. The winning score was 9 out of 12, at only 8 years old! Impressive and I am not sure how well we would have done had the tables been turned.

Our next Family Tasting is the 11th of August but I think we may well be running a few more….