How to Run a Tasting Group
How to Run a Tasting Group
Section titled “How to Run a Tasting Group”
Almost nobody reaches the upper CMS levels tasting alone. Blind tasting is a skill you cannot fully self-coach, because your own biases are invisible to you and you cannot pour yourself a truly blind wine. A well-run tasting group fixes both problems: it supplies wines you didn’t choose and honest ears that hear the gaps in your reasoning. But a badly run group is just a wine party with a clipboard. The difference is structure.
Set the group up to work
Section titled “Set the group up to work”Aim for a small, committed circle — a handful of people who show up on a fixed schedule. Consistency beats size; four people tasting weekly will outpace twelve who meet when it’s convenient. Agree up front on the format you’re all working toward (the CMS deductive grid and its running order) and rotate two jobs each session: a pourer who preps the wines blind, and a timekeeper who runs the clock.
Serve wines properly bagged or in opaque sleeves, poured out of sight, with foils and capsules hidden. Control the basics that distort a read: correct glassware, appropriate serving temperature, neutral lighting, and a white surface for judging color. Provide water and plain crackers, and have everyone spit — palate fatigue and alcohol are the enemies of a productive three-hour session.
Run the session with real discipline
Section titled “Run the session with real discipline”- Taste blind, individually, in silence first. Everyone works their own grid without hearing anyone else, so no one anchors on the loudest voice in the room.
- Time it like the exam. Give each wine a fixed window. Tasting against a clock is a separate skill from tasting well, and it only improves with reps.
- Call out loud, then reveal. Each person delivers a full deductive call — structure, climate, Old/New, grape, region, age — before the bag comes off. Speaking commits you and exposes vague reasoning.
- Debrief on reasoning, not just the answer. After the reveal, the useful question is never “who got it?” It’s “which observation pointed the right way, and which one led us astray?” A wrong call built on sound structure is more instructive than a lucky right one.
Build flights on purpose
Section titled “Build flights on purpose”Random bottles teach randomly. The strongest groups theme their flights: three examples of one grape across climates, three grapes that share a color, a single region across vintages, or a deliberate set of traps (a pale high-tannin red, an oaky and an unoaked version of the same grape). Themed flights isolate one variable at a time so the group actually learns the distinction instead of collecting anecdotes. Rotate who builds the theme so everyone practices assembling instructive comparisons.
Keep the culture honest and kind
Section titled “Keep the culture honest and kind”The whole value of a group is candid feedback, and that only survives in a room where being wrong is normal and welcome. Set the tone that missed calls are the point — they’re where the learning is — and keep critique aimed at the reasoning, never the person. Rotate roles so no one becomes the permanent authority, and end each session by having everyone name one specific thing to work on before next time.
Practice this week
Section titled “Practice this week”If you don’t have a group, start one with even two other serious candidates and a standing weekly time. For your first session, keep it simple: three wines, blind, silent individual grids, timed, spoken calls, then a reasoning-focused debrief. Log the flight and each person’s takeaway. The habit of regular, structured, blind reps with honest partners is the single biggest accelerator of tasting skill on the whole path.