Punchdrunk Lovesick Singalong

An important part of wine making is wine tasting.  

Lots and lots and lots of wine tasting.  

We taste wine as often as we can not just because it's delicious but for several reasons.  It's important for the wine making team to know the competition, what are the price points of wines similar to ours? What does the packaging look like? What are the flavor profiles?  What do consumers like?  What are our personal styles, and how are they similar or different?

These were some of the focuses for a tasting at the winery last night.  

The tasting was organized by our Cellar Master J and his lovely wife.

  

Featuring:

Twenty Eight wines from California, France, Chile, New Zealand and South Africa.  

Twelve participants from the wine industry including production (us), vineyard management, accounting/sales and general consumers.

We did five flights of five wines and a 6th flight of three wines.

All wines were tasted blind and rated and at the end the wines were revealed.  

Had to curve the line to get them all in a single shot.

My personal standouts were:

2009 Kelly Flemming, 2009 LMR, 2008 The Barrio, 2008 Westerly Vineyards, 2006 Sancerre Domaine Bernard Fleuriet, 2009 Cornerstone.

Some of the group favorites also included:

2009 Cliff Lede Vineyards, 2008 Lewis Reserve, 2005 George Michel, 2009 Titus, 2008 Wither Hills, 2008 Sencerre Domaine de la Rossignole.

It was a 3.5 hour tasting after a pretty solid 11 hour day at work, which I mention not for your pity but only to excuse my poor tasting notes after about the 17th wine and also to explain why I am not sharing them.  Plus, I find other people's notes pretty boring.  

But I do want to say that South African wines, especially the 2008 The Barrio was a really interesting take on Sauvignon blanc.  It was absolutely nothing like anything I've tasted out of California.  The 4 South African wines we tasted all had a very distinct green pepper/jalapeño quality.  

Seriously, they were like liquid jalapeños.  

Please try some South African SBs, even if you're not a fan of spicy peppers, it's still a neat experience.

The 2006 Fleuriet tasted exactly like Champagne, which maybe made for a slightly less sucessful Sancerre, but I loved it. 

Moving on . . . .

It has come to the attention of the lab that T doesn't even read these posts.  

I need to find proper punishment.

Also,

  We wanted to showcase a typical lunch environment we have with the focus of Kyle's last week.  We don't always talk about what we will miss about Kyle but after next week, I think we will.  

Today's Tunes: Leo's serenade of Kyle will be playing in our heads for a long time to come.

Up Next: Hopefully more serenades and heartfelt emotions. Leo, get your guitar.

-T & L