What is a vertical wine tasting?

If you’re reading this, there is a good chance you’ve heard the phrase “vertical wine tasting” and have some questions. We’re here to answer them for you!

What is a vertical wine tasting?

A vertical wine tasting is when you try the same wine from different vintages, usually from the same producer. Vertical tastings are a great way to learn how weather and growing seasons impact wine.

Lately, we’ve been pouring two vintages of our Blackbird Red here in the tasting room: 2021 and 2022.

2021 was a rainy, overcast year. It was hard to find dry days to pick during harvest. There was a lot of rot, which led to a lot more sorting than usual. You can read more about the 2021 harvest here.

2022 was a very… different year. There was some winter weather that caused crop damage, and we had drought conditions during July and August. Both of these issues led to less fruit than usual. You can read about the 2022 harvest here.

The differences between the two vintages of Blackbird are most easy to detect when you taste them side by side. With a sample of each in glasses in front of you, you can smell both wines before tasting each wine. The differences – and similarities! – become highlighted.

Vertical tastings can also be helpful in seeing how blends have changed over the years. Our Blackbird Red is a blend of Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot. The percentages of each grape differ slightly from year to year, which will obviously impact many aspects of the wine.

Is there such a thing as a horizontal wine tasting?

There is!

A horizontal tasting is when you try the same style of wine from the same vintage BUT from different producers. It’s a good way to get to know a certain growing year. It’s also a great way to learn more about the style of wine being made in a specific region.

The Finger Lakes Wine Alliance (FLWA), an organization focused on representing the Finger Lakes wine region among the greater wine world, hosts a horizontal wine tasting every year in order to create a vintage report for the Finger Lakes region. We actually call it the Vintage Report Tasting. This information can be useful to wine buyers and other members of the industry.

For the FLWA annual vintage report, winemakers or other representatives from the member wineries get together and blind taste (taste without knowing who made what wine) Rieslings from the most recent vintage. We do this every spring. We often taste other single-varietal wines that the region is known for too, like Cabernet Franc or Chardonnay.

Tasting multiple wines from the same year but different producers can give you a sense of common traits of that particular vintage. Do we sense higher ABV (alcohol by volume) across the wines? This could mean a sunnier, warmer year. Are we noticing a lot of bell pepper in the Cab Francs? Bell pepper is reflective of methoxypyrazines (aka pyrazines), a natural compound found in the Cabernet Franc grape skins, and is sometimes heightened during a cooler growing season.

FLWA vintage reports can be read here.

 

Can anyone attend a tasting like this?

While the annual FLAW Vintage Report Tasting is closed to the public, many Finger Lakes wineries host vertical wine tastings throughout the year. We have a vertical tasting series coming up this spring, on April 11th and May 9th. These are two great opportunities to chat with our winemaker Paul Brock and learn the intimate details of what the represented growing seasons were like.

The vertical tastings will be held in our original Estate VIP Wine Library down in the vineyard. Seats are limited to just 12 per date so reservations are definitely required. Learn more by visiting the event page.