The Bottom Line
Grand Tastings is a lovely place to relax with friends and enjoy sampling wines from around the world. Wine tastings are all day, every day; champagne tastings, Fridays only. Specific varieties change weekly.
- Excellent selection
- Friendly service
- Upscale atmosphere
- You have to return every week to try new wines
- It's on McKinney and McKinney is a one-way street
- You have to return every week to try new wines
Description
- Location: 4430 McKinney Avenue, Dallas, Texas 75025
- Phone: (214)559-3491
- Hours: Sun-Thu 10 a.m.-10 p.m., Fri-Sat 10 a.m.-11 p.m.
- Directions: S on 75. Exit Knox-Henderson. Stay on the access road. Turn into the Metro Grill parking lot. It's in back.
- Directions: N on 75. Exit Fitzhugh and go left over the highway. Take a right on McKinney. It's on the right past Oliver.
- Web Site: Grand Tastings
Guide Review - Grand Tastings
I entered the tasting room and Don Burney, the sommelier who owns Grand Tastings along with his sommelier wife Terri, greeted me and gave me two tasting menus. The regular tasting menu contained eleven wines, any five for $12 and a bonus tasting for $10. The premium tasting menu listed five wines for $26 and a bonus tasting for another $10. While I perused the list, he brought me a taste of Piper-Heidsieck, a delicious sparkling wine to start with.
It was a difficult selection. Don offered to select our wines for us and after looking at the list for a while, I finally picked one and said he could choose the rest for me. He did a fine job selecting, of course. My friends and I had varying levels of wine knowledge, so Don helped us out by talking about how wine is made, the different varieties of grapes (though there are more than four hundred, Don told us, and we didn't have time to sample them all), and the differences between American and European winemakers.
One thing he emphasized-and I've heard it before-is that a wine is only as good as you think it is. Even one that has all the finest qualities is only good to you if you like the taste. And wine-tasting is all about the enjoyment.
We tried a variety of wines and Don gave us quite a bit of information on each. Each grape has different characteristics that define it, but the soil, climate, and anything else the grape experiences as it grows will have an effect on the end product.
I suppose we must have looked at him with blank expressions because he brought us three Zinfandels from California, grown about fifty miles apart from each other, and described each area to us: low desert, high desert, moist hills. The difference between the three wines was astounding.
Grand Tastings is an excellent place to gather with friends or to take a date.
