The Taiwan Chamber of Commerce in Northern California held its 38th annual family fun party “Shanshui Club” in Saratoga on December 14th (last Sunday). The event featured a unique wine tasting lecture by professional sommelier Angie An, aiming to enhance the members’ wine tasting skills through a blind tasting experience and promote friendship and communication among members in a relaxed atmosphere. The event attracted many former presidents and senior leaders, with about 70 people attending.
The “Shanshui Club” is an important traditional event of the Taiwan Chamber of Commerce in Northern California that has been going on for 38 years. With the spirit of “talking about mountains and waters,” the event invites senior members, new members, and non-member friends to gather together and have informal discussions about life, business opportunities, and community development. The chamber’s president, Chen Siru, stated that the purpose of the Shanshui Club is to create a platform for casual communication, allowing friends of different generations and backgrounds to get to know each other and facilitate more possibilities for the Taiwanese community and Taiwan-US business development.
The event focused specifically on “wine tasting.” Chen Siru mentioned that wine tasting exchanges are common at chamber events, but being located near the Napa Valley, not everyone has the opportunity to systematically understand the art and culture of wine tasting. Therefore, they specially invited Angie An, a Chinese advanced sommelier, to lead a deep wine tasting experience.
During the lecture, Angie An, who has been in the industry for 20 years, designed a fun blind tasting experience titled “How to Taste Wine Like a Professional.” She prepared four seemingly different red wines that actually came from the same winery, the same vintage, and the same variety of California Cabernet Sauvignon, with subtle adjustments in sweetness, acidity, and tannins. This exercise aimed to train participants to differentiate taste differences and calibrate their own taste perception.
She also demonstrated and explained various practical wine tasting techniques, including the correct way to hold a glass (by the stem to avoid affecting the wine temperature), the proper order of swirling and smelling, and the method of tasting wine from observing the color and aroma to lingering on the palate, allowing the wine to fully interact with different parts of the mouth. She emphasized that there is no standard answer in wine tasting, and the most important thing is to understand what one truly enjoys. Through this experience, she hoped that everyone would gain more confidence in drinking wine in the future and better appreciate the culture and enjoyment of wine.
Honorary President of the World Taiwanese Chambers of Commerce, Lin Gui-xiang and her husband, were also present at the event. She told Dajiyuan that the “Shanshui Club” is an important exchange platform that the Chamber of Commerce has inherited over the years. Through relaxed gathering formats, friends from different backgrounds can connect with each other, get to know the chamber, understand the chamber, and attract more new members to join.