First WineTwunch: a major success
Posted by Theo Heselmans on July 1st, 2011
A couple of weeks ago an idea started spreading across the Belgian wine-twitter scene: let's get together and enjoy what we like best: Wine!
Filip, Jelle and Peter were the culprits. They took the initiative, and soon managed to get everything together:
- a date and time (yesterday)
- a sweet location
(Wine-bar Pazzo in Antwerp) - 15 eager people (Filip, Jelle, Peter, Danielle, Olaf, Stijn, Hans, Jonas, Jens, Werner, Melanie, Fabrice, Kaat, Wim and myself)
- a great flexible menu (moderately priced too)
- corkage fee included (important!)
Well, we ended up having close to 30 bottles!
A feast to make even Bacchus jealous with envy !
We sure had some beautiful (and some less blessed) wines to go through. A decent pace was needed, but there was no real rush.
On the table:6 bubbles, 8 whites, 14 reds and 2 sweets (and a homebrew beer from Hans to round the evening night off).
Here's an overview of the wines we tasted:
 Cava Can Festis (SP) |  Entre-Deux-Monts (BE) |  Champagne La Closerie Extra Brut 2004 (FR) |
 Champagne Jean Michel 2004 Blanc de Blancs (FR) |  Franciacorta Satén van Pizzini (IT) |  Champagne Francis Boulard Brut Nature 2006 (FR) |
 Riesling 2009 – Philipp Kuhn – Pfalz (DE) |  Le cèdre Viognier 2007 (FR) |  Genoels-Elderen Gold 2000 (BE) |
 Clos d’Opleeuw 2006 (BE) |  Chablis 2008 – Alice & Olivier De moor (FR) |  Riesling ‘Montiggl’ 2009 – St. Michael-Eppan (IT) |
 Velich ‘To’ 2008 Apetlon (AUT) |  Meursault ‘Les Narvaux” 2009 – Jobard & Morey (FR) | |
 Buena Pinta 2010 – Manchuela (SP) |  Saint Cosme ‘Little James Basket Press’ (FR) |  St. Joseph 2009 – Dard & Ribo (FR) |
 Quinta do Crasto Tinto 2009 (PT) |  Gevrey-Chambertin 2009 – Philippe Pacalet (FR) |  Pommard 2006 – François Mikulski (FR) |
 Malophet 2010 (FR) |  Isole e Olena ‘Cepparello’ 2004 (IT) |  Els Pics Priorato 2008 (SP) |
 St. Joseph ‘Les pierres seches’ 2007 – Yves Cuilleron (FR) |  Finca Sobreno Reserva 2005 – Toro (SP) |  Rosemount Estate ‘Balmoral’ 1994 (AUS) |
 Amphoraey Vineyard 2000 – (IL) |  Mauro 2005 - Castilly y Léon (SP) | |
 Moscato d’Asti Ca’d Gal ‘Lumine’ (IT) |  Château Chalon 2000 – Vin Jaune 2000 (FR) |  (Beer) Ceci c'est pas une Saison (BE |
As you can guess, we all had a great evening, and I'm sure we'll do it again.
Many thanks to Filip for doing most of the organization, and to all the fellow wine-lovers, for bringing good wine and for being great company.
Cheers to all of you.
Category: Wine | 
Technorati: Wine
Comments (5)
And a fine evening/night it was indeed!
Excellent resume with accompanying pics of all the bottles we had. Already looking forward for Winetwunch2.
Grtz, Peter
Seems like a fine initiative. Living in Antwerp I regret to have missed it ;)
Some small remarks ... how do you maintain some level of quality? Meaning who defines the order of the wines you drink and would'nt it be better to define themes,like Italy of Bordeaux etc ...?
30 bottles seems quite high fore a tasting? I you don't spit it out, I can hardly imagine anyone can taste anything after 15 bottles?
I know it is the spirit of a twunch and the surprise that counts ... just wondering
@Pvw
Try to follow one of the current winetwunch member on twitter, and I'm sure you'll know when our next event is happening. Probably in the fall.
The question of 'quality' is easily solved: everyone tries to bring a wine that they hope will please the rest. Inherent quality ;-)
But it is true that we had a very diverse selection, and defining the order (except for bubbles/whites/reds/sweets) was difficult. We tasted in pairs, so we had some weird combinations.
But is was fun nevertheless.
As for the quantity: sure, 30 bottles is a lot, but nothing most of us have not done before.
And we had plenty of spit buckets (crachoirs), which were used, emptied and re-used a lot !
Hope to see you there next time too.
After visiting your site multiple times after the #winetwunch I would like to post that I just loved the ambiance and road to the actual twunch on twitter.
Hopefully a second version will be organised after the holiday season and like pvw suggested a theme could be incorporated.
Nevertheless this setup wasn't anything like a normal wine tasting which made it unique!
Hopefully seeing you next time guys.
See ya on twitter: { Link }
fun reading the twunch posts and yes, had a couple of smiles by seeing all those bottles again
i do like the blind tasting and the "not knowing what will come" of this kind of events
yes, some bottles would have tasted differently/ better (?) on a more right spot in the line-up
but most of all, and for me most important, we all had a lot of fun and joined a great lunch with people who drink wine because they are passioned about it, not because they want to be 'chique'
;-)
looking forward to seeing you all another time