Friday, Sep. 15, 2006

Wrestling with tasting fees

By Andy Perdue, Wine Press Northwest

What is the biggest point of contention among wine lovers? What lone subject can raise the blood pressure and bring out a half-dozen points of view during heated debates?

It's neither oaky Chardonnays nor high-alcohol wines. Corks vs. screwcaps? Forget about it.

Tasting fees. That's what gets the blood boiling. And in the Pacific Northwest, they're coming to a winery near you - if they haven't arrived already.

Tasting fees are modest charges to try wines at tasting rooms. They come in many forms. Often, they're refunded with a purchase. Sometimes, you end up with a souvenir glass. Occasionally, they're for special wines only. They are also showing up during big wine country weekend events.

No statistics are available on how many Northwest wineries charge tasting fees in one form or another, but this is a fact: The more popular a wine region becomes, the more likely there will be tasting fees in some form. In the Northwest, this means Washington's Walla Walla and Woodinville areas and Oregon's Yamhill County. But it isn't limited to these regions.

Tasting fees took hold over the past two decades in California. Because the Napa Valley is a short drive from San Francisco, many wineries had to charge small fees to fend off city dwellers who saw wine country as an opportunity for a free cocktail hour. The practice has spread through much of the Golden State and now into the Northwest.

Though tasting fees are becoming more commonplace, the experience isn't always pleasant.

Last year, I was in Southern California for a couple of wine competitions. We had three days between the judgings, so a group of us headed to Temecula, an emerging wine region south of Los Angeles that unfortunately is best known for being one of the areas most devastated by Pierce's Disease, a vineyard-ravaging viticultural nightmare carried by a little bug called the glassy-winged sharpshooter.

Our trip to Temecula started pleasantly enough. We enjoyed a wonderful barbecue with Joe Hart, owner/winemaker of Hart Winery. But the next day, things turned ugly. The first tasting room we arrived at wanted $6 to taste five wines. We quickly asked, "Is that refundable with purchase?" Sorry, but you can keep the glass. None of us had a glass shortage at home, nor did we want to haul them on the plane. We tasted our wines and left. At the second winery, it was the same deal: $6 for five tastes. And keep the glass. The third stop was more of the same but with a twist: All of the wines were badly oxidized, and the person behind the bar was wearing heavy perfume and didn't know a Petite Sirah from a white Zinfandel.

Angrily, we gave up and headed back toward L.A. Tasting fees - and mediocre wines - had left bad tastes in our mouths.

When I got back home, I wrote about my experience in my Northwest Wine of the Week column, which is distributed via e-mail. I didn't care at all about the money. I simply felt that if a winery was going to charge a tasting fee, the experience had better be worth it.

The response I received was like none I'd ever seen. My in-box was flooded with more than 100 e-mails, all of which were filled with passion and took every possible point of view. This was something people care about. I heard from wine lovers who seethed at the idea of fees - and those who figured they were a way of life. I heard from several wineries, many of whom had varying points of view.

I spent the next three weeks writing about tasting fees using these comments.

In our cover story this issue, I've included many of the most compelling comments I received from readers.

My Temecula experience had me convinced that tasting fees - especially when handled poorly - were a bad thing. But just a few months later, my opinion was dramatically swayed. During last fall's annual Catch the Crush, a September wine harvest festival in Washington's Columbia Valley, I was at a small, rural winery in the outskirts of Richland, Wash. It was a pleasant day, and everyone was having a great time. From the distance, though, we began to hear a buzz, then a roar. Suddenly, up the long gravel driveway came a flock of city dwellers on Italian motor scooters, called Vespas. There must have been 40 of them. They parked and descended on the festivities. Like locusts, they quickly dispatched with the cheese and crackers artistically laid out by a local caterer and headed for the wine.

The moment I saw a young woman with a smoldering cigarette in one hand and an empty glass outstretched in the other, my opinion on tasting fees did a 180-degree turn. This person didn't know what wine was in the glass. She didn't care about its nuances or the efforts the winemaker went through to craft it. She simply wanted alcohol. To her, Catch the Crush was an open bar.

Those scooters don't have much room for bottles, and this group left without buying much wine. They should have paid for what they drank. They are the reason wineries are turning to tasting fees.

Everyone who reads this far will have an opinion on tasting fees, regardless of my words. Then write us with your opinion. You can be guaranteed this won't be the last time we address this topic.

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