Wine Tasting, in Its Several Forms

Many of Amsterdam's better wine bars offer a small flight of three or four glasses, usually built around a loose theme such as one grape shown across several regions, or a single region shown across several styles. It asks nothing of you beyond curiosity and rewards simply comparing one glass with the last, out loud if you like, rather than needing a formal vocabulary for whatever you happen to notice along the way.

A vertical tasting lines up the same wine from a single producer across several different vintages, which is a genuinely striking way to feel how weather and time change one style year on year. A horizontal tasting instead lines up several producers from the same vintage or the same small region, which shows how much a single patch of land, or a single winemaker's hand, can shape the exact same starting point. Both formats are more common at a seated, guided evening than at a casual bar flight, since each asks for a little more structure to make real sense of what is being poured.

A blind tasting hides the label until after you have formed an opinion, which strips away the effect a famous name or an expensive bottle can otherwise quietly have on the palate. It is less a test than a genuinely useful reset, and many drinkers are pleasantly surprised by which glass they actually preferred once the labels are finally shown at the end. Treat any guess about grape or region as a game rather than a performance for the table; the point of the exercise is the conversation afterwards, not being provably right.

A tasting built around food rather than wine alone changes the shape of the evening considerably, since each pairing asks a specific question about how a dish and a glass interact rather than simply how the wine tastes on its own. Cheese is the most common pairing offered, though a growing number of venues now build a tasting around a single course repeated with several different wines beside it, a useful trick for anyone who wants to see how much a pairing can change the same plate.

Chocolate is a less obvious but genuinely rewarding pairing, particularly with a fortified wine such as port, and a handful of Amsterdam venues have started building short tastings around exactly that combination. Asking in advance whether a food element is included, and what it covers, saves any surprise once the bill for the evening actually arrives.

A standing flight at a bar can comfortably fill an hour, though most guests happily let it run longer once conversation gets going and a second flight starts to look tempting. A seated, guided tasting runs closer to two hours once the introductions, the pours and the pauses between them are all added together, and a vertical or horizontal tasting built around six or eight wines can easily stretch past that if the host is genuinely knowledgeable and the table keeps asking good questions. Building in a little extra time rather than watching the clock tends to make for the better evening either way.

The right companion for a tasting is simply one who enjoys comparing notes rather than performing expertise she does not have. Lucy has a genuinely curious, unhurried manner and a habit of noticing small details others miss, whether in a glass or a night sky. Sonya, by contrast, brings a calm, meditative presence to the same table, someone happy to sit with a wine a little longer before finally deciding what she thinks of it.

A tasting in the Jordaan suits either woman especially well, since the district's quieter canals hold a good concentration of small, serious wine bars worth an unhurried evening of moving between a few.

A wine tasting pairs naturally with a girlfriend experience, unhurried by design and easy to stretch into dinner afterwards if the evening is going well. Name the format you have in mind when you write, and everything else is arranged from there. Reservations are always confirmed in writing, and the hour begins from €180.