Comparing wines: Horizontal and Vertical tastings

An effective way to compare wines, are horizontal and vertical tastings. It’s easy judginbg wines side by side, but some different concepts have developed around the organization of those tastings.

When you are going to hold a wine tasting, you can decide to have: a general tasting, a vertical tasting or a horizontal tasting. The differences between the types are:

General Tasting – This is a free-for-all. There are no real limitations on the wines that you have involved. You may, of course, limit the wines to those from a particular part of the world, or grape variety, or price range or whatever other criteria that you select.

Horizontal Tasting

A Horizontal Tasting involves wines that all come from the same vintage. You decide the vintage and you determine if you are going to place any other limitations on the wines involved. You might decide to have only red wines, or wines from a single grape variety or just “Bordeaux Blends”; but, the wines will all be from a single vintage.

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