A refreshing drop from First Drop Wines

There's a lot of "wankery" in the world of wine appreciation (yes, I know, who'd have thought it?), which is why is was so refreshing, no pun intended, to come across winemaker Matt Grant from First Drop Wines, a "virtual" winery based in South Australia's Adelaide Hills, at a tasting last week.

Matt is no light weight when it comes to winemaking (he was Young Winemaker of the Year in '04 and the inaugural Young Gun of the Year in '07) but his approach to running a wine "masterclass" was light-hearted to say the least. In between tastings of some lovely wines from First Drop and other South Australian producers, tasters were invited to join in activities such as a blind "sniffing" to identify some common fruit and veggie "flavours" found in wine, complete with blindfold; a contest inspired by The Price is Right to identify the combined total of the wines tasted (for the record my guess was out by over $100 - I did not become a journalist because I'm good at maths!) and a wine spitting contest to see who could spit their red wine the furthest. While I'm not a fan of spitting under any circumstances - even into a spitoon at a wine tasting - the roars of laughter from guests during the last game suggested that not everyone is so squeamish.

At the end of the evening everyone walked away not only having learnt something (did you know, for example, that Michia  is slang for both the male and female sex organs in some parts of Italy?), but having had some fun, and isn't that what drinking wine should be about?