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Upcoming Sommelier-Guided Tasting Events of
The Wine Elite Society:
All public events are currently listed by region on the Meetup platform:
Orange County | San Diego | Los Angeles
Membership in each of these regional tasting societies is free. Choose your area and sign up to be a member. No prior wine knowledge is necessary to enjoy these tastings.
(Note: While our public tastings are only available in Southern California, our private events are available to you nationwide through our spread-out team of sommeliers and entertaining wine educators.)
We will offer our educational and systematic wine tasting dinners in each month of 2014, in all 3 areas of Southern California. Join us for the public tastings on Meetup now, via the city links above.
Our public wine event program is dedicated to blind tasting the highest quality wines from around the world, in an elegant and relaxed dinner setting. Our tasting dinners and advanced seminars—held regularly in Orange County, Los Angeles and San Diego—are ideal for anyone who is interested in learning more about fine wine appreciation with like-minded and interesting others.
We currently have more than 1500 active members in the Greater Los Angeles area who attend our sommelier-guided wine tasting dinners regularly.
The philosophy of our tastings was discussed in this recent 1 hour GrapeRadio interview with sommelier Jörn Kleinhans. We invite you to experience our tastings yourself.
We also offer professional sommelier training courses in Orange County. Book your seat in the upcoming Sommelier Training Academy here. If you live outside California, enroll for our Online Tasting Course.
Typical Event Format -- Sample:
Sommelier Dinner: Tasting Methods of the Court of Master Sommeliers
this is the profile of a typical public event. for private events, go here
Island Hotel
Newport Beach, California
Please join us on this upcoming Friday for a relaxed multi-course dinner where we will together explore the systematic blind-tasting methodology used by the Court of Master Sommeliers. This evening will be fun and highly useful for every wine drinker, experienced level or just beginning. It will deliver you a clear and concentrated tool box to objective wine evaluation and identification. The line up will only include typical classics of the world:
Bordeaux, Burgundy, Barolo, Chianti, Rioja, Riesling, Rhone Syrah, etc.
I just returned from the Court's Advanced Sommelier course and would like to share the methods learned and demonstrate how you can become a much better wine drinker within 3 hours.
Please join me. Again, your background in wine does not matter. The Wine Elite is open to everyone. While we focus deeply on the applied study of wine, you don't need prior a background. Our blind-tastings are a great equalizer for experts and novices alike.
This 3-course dinner and wine tasting of 8+ typical wines from around the world will be priced at $120, including everything: food, wine, sommelier guidance, tax, tip and parking.
We will break down every single wine systematically via blind-tasting, featuring appearance, nose, palate and conclusions about typicity.
Noted Past Event Themes:
Sommelier Panel Show: Listening to the Experts on a Grand Blind-Tasting Evening
2016 | Hilton, Costa Mesa
We will listen to a panel of experienced wine experts during this dinner tasting, blind-tasting a great flight of 8 red wines alongside.
We will have two bottles of each wine in this session for big pours, presenting 8 different top wines in a systematic blind-tasting setting. Unlike other Wine Elite sessions, only 4 very experienced Wine Elite members and 3 qualified outside speakers (the "panel") will discuss the tasting notes of each wine during the dinner, while the other members in attendance can lean back, learn from proven experts and enjoy the show while tasting the same wines simultaneously.
Speakers include wine educators, high-end collectors, certified sommeliers and industry professionals, from within the OC Wine Elite and brought from outside.
Wine Line-Up: Trust me that we will drink some of the highly-rated and expensive classics from around the world.
Speakers: I have recruited some of OC's best sommelier and blind-tasting talent for this event.
Comparing High-End with Low-End, in a Grape-by-Grape Pair Blind-Tasting
2015 | Hotel Angeleno, Bel Air
Join for this theme night at the ultra-modern Hotel Angeleno, rooftop at 405 and Sunset! In this wine tasting dinner, we will have one cheap and one expensive bottle of each grape/region combination. Throughout the evening, we will go through 5 sets of 2 wines, tasting a total of 10 different bottles at 2 ounzes each. For example, we could compare a cheap Rhone Valley Syrah with a very expensive one, side by side, and then do the same thing for 4 other grapes.
Co-host and guest speaker of the evening is our very own Dr Michael Pariser, who will share his thoughts on understanding the concepts of wine subtlety, complexity, balance of power/finesse and elegance with us. As all our tastings, this session is directed by certified sommelier Joey Kleinhans.
We will all try to guess which grape and region we are dealing with in each pair of wines, and of course the critical question will be which wine is the expensive one. We have a nice three-course dinner alongside. Wine cost is $60, plus dinner expense.
The exciting discussion will be led by qualified wine collectors and sommeliers. Look forward to an educational and fun blind-tasting dinner that will bring your tasting skills to a new level.
We will try to pick some special wines that are well worth our expense. Any important varietal from around the world is fair game this evening, with the promise that the specific bottles must be from one of the best regions of that varietal.
“As always, the organizer was thoughtful in his choices, and managed the presentation well. The invited expert did an excellent job of providing context for each set of wines. The fact that our guesses - expert and inexpert - were often wrong, makes the whole exercise more accessible and fun.” — Preston
“It was excellent. I thought the structure of the tasting was well thought out and the direction of the tasting by Michael was outstanding. Good choice of wines and with great discussion and surprising results. This was very good for both a novice and an intermediate wine enthusiast!” — Kimberly
“The tasting event was excellent. I enjoyed the wine, the people, and appreciated greatly Joey's and Mike's instruction.” — Zaheer
The French Invasion - A Study of Burgundy, Bordeaux, Rhone, Loire
2014 | Hotel Angeleno, Bel Air
We will taste 8-10 wines during this guided study of top producer French wines. We will also sample some dried french salami.
White Wines: Vouvray, Sancerre, Condrieu, Chablis
Red Wines: Margaux (Bordeaux), Premiere Cru Burgundy, Cornas, Anjou (Loire) et al.
In this tasting session we will discuss and practice the optimal use of tasting sheets and we will talk about grape recognition.
All within our framework of a fun and intensively educational wine-focused dinner & blind-tasting experience.
More Past Events
Wine Royalty: Kings and Queens of the Old World, featuring Barolo, Bandol and Cornas 2013 | Island Hotel, Newport Beach
