FBV April Meeting Minutes

 

The April meeting of the FBV was held at Bob Bowles place.  Many thanks to Bob for his
hospitality.

 

President’s report

 The meeting started with a discussion of the organization’s meeting night.  Pros and cons of meeting on Wednesday were mentioned. 

A motion was made and seconded that our meeting night be on the third Wednesday of each month unless it was convenient for the host to change the night to some other day of the week, and the officers approved the change.  The motion was voted on and it passed

Pete and Chuck and Alan discussed the possibility that our PR is not getting handled the way we would like and that this is part of the problem we are experiencing with classes and other FBV projects getting canceled for lack of participation. 

Alan suggested that we have a committee made of Bob, Chuck, Pete, Alan, and John meet to discuss ways of improving our communication with the community

For the good of the order

Several members attended a wine tasting clinic at Rafaldini winery.  The intent of the clinic was to identify wine flaws.  In conjunction with this the North Carolina Wine Growers Association is offering a sticker to put on bottles that do not have technical flaws to the effect that consumers will know that this is a fault free wine.  FBV feels that this may be misleading the consumer into thinking that the wine is therefore and excellent wine, when in fact it may not be.  There was some discussion about how our organization should react to this concern.  Pete suggested that we should bring our concerns to the NCWGA and ask them to review their evaluation process.  Chuck suggested we ramp up our evaluation process and issue local wine evaluations based on the 4 star system using our members as a sensory panel to issue the ratings.

Tom Mincarelli will organize a series of wine tasting and judging days that meet during the month on days that do not conflict with the organization meetings. At these meetings our members will taste, judge, and discuss different wines in order to sharpen evaluation skills. 

 

Educational component

Alan and Paul presented a sensory exercise related to wine evaluation.  Fifteen different aroma vials were passed around to the membership and each member was asked to identify the odor.  Correct answers were then provided and each member checked their own responses.  It was a fun drill that revealed just how difficult it is to identify aromas.  Judy won the contest guessing 7 out of 15 correctly.  Most scores were much lower.

 

JD feeling the spirit(s)