Maryland Cru Meet (or Why You Should Start a Wine Tasting Group)

Several fine Champages...more than a dozen premium California red wines...Joseph Phelps...Sea Smoke...Chateau St. Jean...delicious French Cuisine. Sound like something you would be interested in? If you like wine and have a pulse, I would have to assume that your answer would be a resounding “YES!” If your name is Robert Parker, Stephen Tanzer or Eric Asimov, a night like this would probably be called...uh... “Tuesday.” For the rest of us, such an evening would constitute a rare treat indeed.

Well, I had this rare treat this past Sunday at the February meeting of a group of Wine Spectator Forum regulars called “The Maryland Cru.” We met up at a fine Columbia, Maryland eatery called Café de Paris and drank some serious wines, and a lot of them. The group tries to meet every month to experience a variety of wines, eat some great food and just enjoy each others company. Even though this was my first time out with them, the company I did enjoy...tremendously. We were even joined by Paul and Stefania of Stefania Wine who brought not only themselves and a lot of insight into the world of California wine making, but also some delicious barrel samples.

I chose to not take copious notes and rather sit back, snap a few pictures, enjoy the many wonderful wines and food and relax. As such, I shall defer to Mike over at A Food and Wine Blog for the listing of wines and tasting notes.

Of course, the point of this post is not to make you jealous about all the great wines we sampled while you sat at home in your recliner watching the Academy Awards. The point is to highlight that such diverse and wonderful wine experiences can be enjoyed anywhere. If you are not a member of a local wine tasting group, be it an informal group of friends who share an enthusiasm for fermented grape juice or a more formal club, you should be. Delicious and educational tastings happen when ten people show up with ten wines and everyone passes the bottles around and the cost of admission need only be the cost of a single bottle of wine. So, by all means, recruit others on wine-related Internet forums like those at Wine Spectator, Wine Library TV or The Wine Lovers Page, all of which have separate sub-forums for “offline” wine meets. If that doesn't work, try and put up some flyers at your local wine shops, recruit co-workers or relatives, or even stand at a busy stoplight with a cardboard sign. It's simply a wonderful way to meet some great folks and experience a lot of different wines.