When I first came across iYellow Wine Club, I was intrigued. I’ve been to wine classes before (notably, the LCBO class I took a couple of years ago) but I am by no means an expert. I was very excited to be a guest at the final session of one of their classes.
Angela and Taylor
The founder of iYellow Wine Club is Angela Aiello. She designed the club to help build wine confidence. With this club, you can taste, learn and have fun with wine.
The Winter session classes were held weekly at the lovely Ritz Carlton Hotel from Feb until April. Each class ran from 6-7:30pm and is $45 per class. At each class you get to taste 6 wines all paired with (DELICIOUS) cheeses specially selected from the TOCA Cheese Cave. The theme for the winter classes was California Wines.
blind taste test!
I unwittingly arrived on exam day. The class had to blind taste 6 wines, 3 white and 3 red. We had to guess the grape, vintage (how old the wine is) and region. Needless to say, I just watched. And was amazed! This class knew their stuff. The class was fun and informal. Sommelier Taylor Thompson and Angela were charming and informative as we tasted each wine.
Here are some things that I learned:
- Wine legs are the streaks of wine the fall down the glass after you have swirled the wine. If the legs fall quickly, the wine could be from a cool climate.
- If wines are called a specific grape, it must contain at least 75% of the grape
- Don’t know what to say about tasting notes in a white wine? Try pear, there is almost always a note of pear in a white wine
- If the wine is a ruby red colour, it’s a young wine. Red wine gets brown with age.
- If the wine has less acidity, it could be a warmer wine.
- If you taste leather or earth, the wine has been aged.
The wines we tasted included: Entwine, Bonterra Piont Noir,and Silver Palm chardonnay. Yum.
After the quiz, our wines were accompanied with some fantastic cheese (and really good bread) from Toca’s cheese cave.
I snuck a quick peek at the Toca cheese cave
I loved this class, and would definitely recommend signing up for their next session. In addition to classes, iYellow Wine Club organizes day trips and wine events around Toronto and outside the city. On May 25th they will be hosting a Prince Edward County Tour and they have several other Toronto events. If you’ve always wanted to learn about wine, but were too afraid, this is the club for you.
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