Tonight I attended a competitive wine tasting event put on by Bacchanalian Society of Denver. My boss, Mark, is the co-founder of this amazing organization. He started this charity event a couple of years ago and each year the attendance has gone up. They raised over 5K last year for the United Way!

This year the event was held at the University of Denver’s Cable Center and all the proceeds benefit the Boys and Girls Club of Metro Denver.

Anyways, I probably should explain what a “competitive wine tasting” means. Basically you have a team of three people. I invited Katie and Listy to the event and our brilliant team name was, “Silky Smooth.” Don’t Mess with The Zohan, anyone? I thought it was fitting.

Each team provides 3 bottles of the exact same wine. The varietal for this event is Pinot Noir.

When you arrive, you give all three bottles to the host who will wrap two of the bottles to conceal the wine’s identity. The two wrapped bottles will have a number randomly assigned to them and will then be set out for chugging tasting. The third bottle will be left unopened.

Then each team receives a card with a taste scale ranging from 1 to 5 written on it. One being your least favorite to five being your most favorite wine. At the end of the tasting period, you write down the number of your least and most favorite wine. Cards are collected at the end of night and then tallied to decide the winning team.

Pretty simple, right?

Well after about four or five tables of sampling, it all started to taste the same. So you end up asking people around you which wine tastes better.  Quite a few people were being a little too honest. But that’s half the fun!

The best part is, if your team wins you get to take home everyone’s third unopened bottle of wine! It’s like 80+ bottles of free wine. You could be drunk everyday for the rest of the year. Fantastic.

Sadly we did not win. But the event was so fun and I am glad I got to help out a charity!