I tried 14 wines from eastern Europe at an Asheville wine class

The Bebop Bottle Shop in West Asheville recently launched a wine class program that goes through the end of December. Each class they feature a different region to discuss the wines that come out of that area.

My husband Nick and I decided to go at the last minute when we saw they had a couple of spots available for the class.

We made sure to eat dinner beforehand and were pleased to see they were offering mini charcuterie plates for $5. Good for staying sober-ish and cleansing the palate between tastes. I bought one for myself since Nick said he didn’t want one. He ended up snacking on mine, so I made him buy his own.

The event was held at The Bebop Bottle Shop in West Asheville, in their back room. They had a projector and slideshow with maps of the countries we were covering, which was helpful as we worked our way through wines from different parts of Eastern Europe.

Chris, a wine distributor from Rise Over Run, helped discuss the wines sourced by his company, while one of the owners, Phil, talked about wines brought in from other distributors.

They kept the class fun and light rather than making it feel overly formal. They asked questions, and left plenty of time for everyone to discuss the wines with the people sitting around them, and there were lots of room-wide laughs as we compared our tasting and smelling notes.

There were about 15 people in the class. We were given small pours, roughly 1 oz of each wine, and plenty of water was passed around throughout the evening. The class ran from about 6:30 until just before 9:00, so there was plenty of time to work through all 14 wines without feeling rushed.

We really enjoyed almost all of the wines. I tend to love Eastern European wines, and I was pleased with the majority of the wines we tasted. In my opinion, it’s also one of the tougher regions to truly understand when it comes to the grapes, simply because there are so many different indigenous varieties. Georgia, for example, is considered one of, if not the oldest, wine-producing regions in the world, with winemaking dating back around 8,000 years, and is home to 525 indigenous grape varieties. We also had wines from Croatia, Slovenia, and one from Slovakia. Of the 14, I did not hate a single one.