Tasting Adventures at Le Cuvier

We have introduced a series of special tasting activities for wine club members & their guests only. These events promise to be both fun & informative. Winemakers John Munch & Robin Graham will lead discussions on the Le Cuvier winemaking process as they guide you through unique barrel & bottle tastings. Don't miss out on these opportunities to experience Le Cuvier in intimate & (if John is up to his usual form) entertaining fashion. Make a reservation today.

Library Vertical Tasting - April 21st  at 11 a.m. ($85 per person; limited to 10 guests)

WHAT IS INVOLVED? The Wine Library at our new location is built under ground & can hold over 9,000 bottles of older vintage wines under optimal cellar conditions. This offers us an opportunity to share knowledge on aging wines & to make available our sizeable collection, which includes wines going all the way back to winemaker John Munch’s first vintage in 1981. The Vertical Tasting seminar is designed to give participants clear guidelines on how to store & age wines, some options on how to maintain a useful inventory of your own cellar collection, & how to open & serve older wines that have developed natural sediment in the bottle. We will inaugurate our first Wine Library event with a 3-year vertical tasting of Cabernet Sauvignon from the 1999, 2000 & 2001 vintages, giving a good sense of how well Le Cuvier wines age. 

WHAT IS INCLUDED? Lunch with the Le Cuvier winemakers will be included at the end of the seminar.

Blending Seminar - Pentimento - May 5th at 11 a.m. ($85 per person; limited to 10 guests)

WHAT IS IT ABOUT? Our multi-vintage Pentimento is both a crowd pleaser & a puzzle. How do those winemakers decide on the just-so-right combination of varietals & vintages? Can anything be more vexing? Au contraire, Assistant Winemaker Robin Graham has been known to compare “Pentimento blending day” at the winery to Christmas morning where you never know what amazing surprise you will be given. Participants at this unique seminar will share in that sense of discovery as they learn about the unique Le Cuvier approach to blending various wines from various vintages into an appealing wine. Following a discussion by the winemakers on the blending process, participants will be grouped into 4 teams, each of which will be provided with an array of wines & graduated cylinders with which to create their own special blends. At the end we will have a blind tasting to select the order of preference between your group blends.

WHAT IS INCLUDED? Lunch with the winemakers, during which we will ponder our collective winemaking prowess.

Blind Tasting - Cabernet Sauvignon  - Re-scheduled to December 8th at 11.a.m. ($85 per person; limited to 10 guests)

WHEN & WHERE: Saturday June 9th at 11 a.m.

WHAT IS A BLIND TASTING? In order to determine the “best” wine in a group, the most accurate way to do so is by tasting very quickly. Winemakers John Munch and Robin Graham will lead you through a process whereby you will learn to choose order of preference in a grouping of six wines within 30 seconds or less. Sounds strange, but the premise is that our sense of taste & smell are associated with the “Old One,” a primitive part of the brain that developed early in our evolution. The Old One survived through natural selection, while those candidates less successful at making accurate choices disappeared from the gene pool.  It is our view that when we tap into the Old One, our judgment always proves to be lightning quick and perfectly accurate, so long as we don’t allow our babbling intellects to interfere with the process.

WHAT IS INCLUDED? We will taste five Cabernet Sauvignon wines from the same vintage. One of the five will be a Le Cuvier wine, while the other Cabs will be high-end wines from various areas, including at least one very highly rated wine to serve as a benchmark. Lunch with the winemakers is included, during which we will continue to consider the wines accompanied by the meal.