Pleaides XVI: Coming Soon

I am very excited as Sean Thackrey's Pleaides XVI has just been released. Sean Thackrey's Pleaides has long been one of my favorite wines. You can check out my prior post on Sean Thackrey to learn more about the wine maker and his unique wines.

I ordered a case of the Pleaides XVI from Jill at Domaine547 and if you want some as well then I suggest you order some soon as the wines are low production, usually very popular and will likely sell out fairly quickly.

I now will have bottles from the last five productions of Pleaides, from XII to XVI. So I would like to do a vertical tasting of them. A vertical tasting is when you drink several different vintages of one wine. The vintages do not have to be consecutive though they can be. There is also no set amount of wines that you have to taste. I chose five just because I thought it would be a good number for the a vertical tasting.

You can start the tasting with either the oldest or newest wines. Though it may make more sense to start with the older wines as they may be more subtle than the newer wines. If you start with the bigger and bolder newer wines, then it might overwhelm your palate so that you could miss the more subtle touches of the older wines. I think I might start with my oldest Pleaides, the XII.

I have to consider as well who to invite to the vertical tasting. Which of my friends would appreciate such a tasting? I could not drink five bottles of wine on my own and it certainly would be far more fun to share the wine with some good friends. Wine shared is often better than wine drank alone. Yet how many people do I invite? What is the optimum number so that each person gets to have a decent portion of wine? Five people, considering one bottle per person?

Then of course we should have some food with the wines, something to complement them. Do I have a multi-course meal or just varied appetizers? It might be easier just to have appetizers as it would be more work to plan a multi-course meal that paired well with the wine.

There are many details to consider. And maybe some I have not even considered. So, has anyone else held a vertical tasting before? Any tips?