This blind wine tasting kit is the perfect date night in
We sipped in the name of science to see how it works.
Credit: Argaux
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When I was engaged to my husband, older and wiser couples advised me to keep “dating” my spouse. While I understood the importance of keeping the romance alive, juggling kids, keeping up with jobs, and maintaining our house took priority over the years.
We tried at-home dates, we really did, but popping open a bottle of wine and serving ourselves thesteakwe’d cooked just five minutes earlier didn’t quite give the same feeling as dining at a fine restaurant. Somehow cleaning your own dishes after a meal doesn’tscreamromance. After turning to Google for a remedy to our need-a-date-night blues, I came acrossArgaux Wine’s Blind Tasting Kit.
How does an Argaux Wine Blind Tasting Kit work?
Make sure you have a wine opener and a writing utensil ready before tasting.
Like most things in 2020, theArgaux Blind Tasting Kitis available for purchase online, and everything you need is delivered right to your door. Although you can’t select the exact bottles of wine that will be delivered—where would the fun be in “blind tasting” wines you whose identity you already knew? —you can choose between reds, whites, or a mixed bag.
You also select the quantity of bottles you want—two, three, or four bottles. The cost of the kit will depend on bottle quantity,starting at $100. Likeother wine delivery services, your Argaux kit arrives at your door with your wine, a scoring card, and instructions for how to conduct your taste test.
What it’s like to blind taste wine with Argaux
All wines come pre-wrapped in black tissue paper, so the tasting is completely blind.
The kit arrived with two bottles of wine neatly wrapped in black tissue paper concealing the labels. One had a sticker on the tissue paper instructing me tochill before use, and the other noted that it should be opened before the tasting for it to breathe—both general rules of thumb fordrinking wine like a pro.
年代ince we don’t have a live-in sommelier (I wish), this really was the next best thing, as the tasting kit creators are sommeliers. I presented acheese plate(sadly, not included in the kit) and the two concealed bottles of wine. After pouring a sampling of white wine for us, the tasting process began.
The Argaux scoring card acts as your guide to blind tasting wine.
We followed along as instructed in an online video; we swished, sniffed, and completed all of the steps required to assess the wine. After recording our notes on taste and clarity, we entered this information into the included wine grid—essentially a tool that helps non-wine experts determine which wine they are drinking by process of elimination.
The best part of the process was the guessing and turned this part into a friendly competition. We shared our respective guess of which wine we were drinking. Was it a sauvignon blanc from New Zealand? Or perhaps a chardonnay from California? We gave each other our final answer and then unwrapped the wine for the big reveal. (For the record, I was right, and he was wrong.)
We repeated the same process for the red.
What we liked
- This kit allowed us to have a fun date night without leaving the home or relying on Netflix to entertain us.
- 我们收到的葡萄酒是很好。
- Ordering was easy.
What we didn’t like
- The mark-up on wine was rather high.
- 正常瓶太多for the two of us to finish in one sitting when sampling more than one bottle, so it would’ve been nice to receive mini bottles to avoid having so many opened bottles of wine in our home at once.
Is a blind wine tasting from Argaux worth it?
Each blind tasting kit comes with your wine, instructions, and a scoring card to record your notes.
I can’t begin to explain how much fun we had doing something like this together, even if it was taking place in our boring old kitchen. We both desperately needed to do something new and fun, and a blind wine tasting certainly fit the bill. We could’ve lazily binged another Netflix show, but instead, we experienced something new, learned a thing or two, and even had a friendly wine-tasting competition (which, to reiterate, I won).
I would absolutely do a blind wine tasting again. The Argaux Blind Wine Tasting Kit is a perfect solution for couples in a COVID-friendly date-night rut and it’s a fun way to feel like you’re at a fancy wine-tasting event without having to change out of your sweatpants.
Get the Argaux Blind Wine Tasting Kit starting at $100
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