| Shane's Wine Opinion's |
| My Favorite Wines of Our Monthly Tasting Reports |
You know, one of the most visited pages on our website every month
is our Monthly Tasting Report. I get asked a lot of questions about
these pages and how we conduct our tastings and make
recommendations quite frequently. We always bag the wine and
serve them “blind” so that no’ one knows, in theory anyway, which
wine is which. Is this the best way to conduct the tastings? It is
certainly the way the wine critics do them, but I am not so sure. I’ll
elaborate more on that in a minute. I do think for the time being that
our tastings should still be conducted blind and here’s why. From the
very first tasting, there became this little competition amongst us,
who would bring the best wine of the tasting. So naturally, there
would be an inclination for one to score his or her wine higher than
everyone else’s. I know that there have been several tasting where
I knew the wine we tasted at the moment was mine, but I have
always tried to be objective about it.
Our tasting results are not for the wine snobs or the cork dorks of
the world, rather, they are for the average wine consumer who just
likes something that is pleasing to the palate. Most people fall into
this category and that is why I think our tasting reports are great.
Our staff members that make up the tasting group range from “Cork
Dork’s” like myself and a couple of others, then we have a mid-
range of people that have been doing this a while now and have a
more developed palate and a reasonable sense of what they like.
And still we have more that are relatively new to wine at least from
an analytical point of view anyway. This broad group of tasters leads
to a very general consensus about which wine is the best in our
tasting. That is why I think our little tasting reports are perfect for
the average consumer.
Now the reason that I am still unsure about doing these tastings
“blind” is that this may or may not be the fairest way to conduct the
tastings with respect to the wine’s themselves. I’ll explain. Some
wines appear to be bland until you drink them with food and then all
of a sudden, they quite literally sing! Still others seem remarkable
until you eat a piece of cheese and then they close down
immediately. Some wines are incredible when you taste them all on
their own, but we you taste them side by side with others, they taste
so different from the rest, it for a lack of a better word, freaks out
your palate and they receive a lower score from the group. When
you go back and try these wines again on their own, you remember
once more, why you loved them in the first place, for their
uniqueness.
Over the past almost two years that we have been doing these
tastings, I have come to know a lot of our taster’s preferences.
Some really like the easy-drinking fruity wines, some like the wines
that are BIG and overwhelm the palate and still others hate any wine
that is very high in tannins. It is really funny because they are all
very consistent with their ratings. These are their preferences in
wines.
I’ve also watched some of our tasters evolve into full-fledged wine
snobs! I’ll give you one person as the perfect example. At our very
first wine of the month tasting, Pinot Grigio, one particular person
professed to us that he had absolutely no skills in dissecting a wine’s
attributes or knowing whether or not a wine was of great character.
He just knew that he either liked something or he didn’t. Well as the
months have past, he took it upon himself to really practice the art of
wine tasting and his skills have progressed to a point where he really
knows what he is doing now. It has been a joy to watch his wine snob
evolution. I get the biggest kick out of in no small part because he
has become the very person that he used to make fun of when we
first started these tastings. Just read his first Editorial and you will
see what I mean. God bless you Ian, you have become a wine snob
and you know it!
I have become a bit of a spoiled brat when it comes to tasting wines
too because I have been fortunate enough to have been exposed to
some really great wines. My preferences at our tastings are the
wines with the most finesse. Sometimes they are wines that are
currently high in tannins and maybe a little tough to drink right now,
but I see their future potential and I become awestruck. I love to
collect wines so I am always on the hunt for wines with great aging
potential and hence, there in lies my passion for these ageless
wonders. I also like the wines that bring something else to the table
other than just being easy drinking quaffers.
The wines that I like best at our tastings sometimes are the ones that
win everyone else’s heart over too, but quite frequently, I am alone
with the cork dork crowd on what we think is the best wine of the
tasting. Again, I would like to reiterate, that is exactly what makes
our tasting results great, because we have a diverse mix of opinions
that will appeal more to the masses than just a selected few. I
thought however, that it would be interesting to some of you, Cork
Dork’s in training to see what some of my favorite wines of our
Tasting Reports were and my comments on them.
I’ll start with our very first tasting, the Pinot Grigio Tasting Report.
The Montevina was a runaway hit to most people and I tended to
agree. It had a very pleasing taste and was quite fruity. Was it the
perfect Pinot Grigio wine? No, not at all. When you think of this
varietal, you tend to think of a bone dry, very acidic wine that is
totally about drinking with food. At least the Italian versions are
anyway. The Montevina was a crowd pleaser to everyone because it
did not need food to be enjoyed. Now one wine that did not fair very
well in this tasting has now gone on to become one of my favorite
Pinot Grigio wines. This wine failed at our tasting because of what at
the time was perceived as a flaw when in reality, was just a mark of a
great quality wine. This Pinot Grigio when we first opened it had a
fizz that kept bubbling up. People thought something was wrong with
it. Actually what that implied was that the winemaker did very little
to interfere with the natural process of the wine making itself. Well,
that is the watered down version anyway. I corked up all the bottles
after our tasting and went back and tasted them again the next day.
This Pinot Grigio really sang to me the next day and I wondered why
it was that none of us liked it the first time around. Today I buy it
frequently and I always enjoy it for its simplicity, yet remarkably
true Pinot Grigio characteristics. I have also come to know just how
great this Italian wine producer is with all of their other wines as
well. I am talking about the San Angelo Pinot Grigio from Castello
Banfi.
Our next tasting report was Pinot Noir and in case anyone is
interested, that is my personal favorite wine varietal and yes, I liked
this varietal the best even before the movie Sideways!
Unfortunately, you have to kiss a lot of toads to find a prince in a
Pinot Noir wine, but when you do find one, oh what a beauty it is!
The Bearboat was most people’s favorite. It was full-bodied and had
plenty of fruit to it. But my personal favorite was the one my French
Canadian friend, Chantal Pellerin brought, the Alain Michelot Red
Burgundy from France. Wow what a wine! It had tremendous
finesse and power and something else that none of the rest had, a
clearly defined personality. My opinion of course!
I’ll skip ahead to the Port and Champagne tasting report. The two
winners of this tasting were the two that I felt were the best too, but I
bring up this tasting report because of the two Port wines. This part
of the tasting was not really fair. We were comparing apples with
oranges. The Six Grapes Port is really a ruby style port that see’s
very little time if any at all in a wooden cask, whereas the Taylor
Fladgate was a 10 year old Tawny that spent ten years of it’s life in a
wooden barrel. They were two completely different styles of Port
Wines altogether and that is why this is one tasting I think we should
re-visit. My personal preference is the Tawny, but we should have
been comparing Tawny Ports to other Tawny Ports.
The Zinfandel tasting report was a source of a sore subject with me.
Yes, the Michael David 7 Deadly Zins was an outstanding Zinfandel
and deserved the accolades, but I just could not figure for the life of
me why no’ one else thought more of the Seghesio. To me the
Seghesio Zin was a Stud! Finesse, flavor, it is all at once intoxicating
and invigorating. I enjoy this wine on a monthly basis I assure you.
If you are new to Zinfandel wines, don’t try the Seghesio, you will be
ruined for life! You will think all the rest are weak and undesirable.
Okay, I guess you can tell I feel strongly about this one. By the way,
they make several different Zins, one of which is called Old Vine and
it is really wonderful!
I soldier on to our Sauvignon Blanc tasting! The first two on our list
were indeed very good and this was the first of two tastings we
conducted at Spice’s Thai Cuisine. The second being the most
recent Gewurztraminer tasting report. The first two had a leg up on
the competition because they paired extremely well with the food.
Having said that, I will tell you that the Mulderbosch Sauvignon
Blanc from South Africa is one of if not my most favorite Sauvignon
Blanc wines in the world. I have served it at wine dinners and it
always receives high praises from all that taste it. It is chocked full
of flavor and develops wonderfully in the glass. To me it was the
best!
Our next wine of the month tasting was our Malbec tasting report.
The Ben Marco won top honors for this tasting. The truth be told, it
would be hard to make a case against it winning the tasting, it was
indeed very good. I was a bit surprised that people liked it that much
because to me, it tasted very much like a young French Bordeaux
wine and if there is one thing that many tasters on our panel don’t
like, it’s earthy French wines. I would like to mention two other
wines that I felt were also outstanding. The Catena and the Clos
Coutale. The Catena was the first wine we opened and all you could
get out of the nose was a bouquet of vanilla from oak and a heady
whiff of alcohol. Then when we came back to it later, it had settled
down into something remarkable. This wine is one that needs to be
decanted. Let it sit for a half hour before you drink it. The Clos
Coutale was also very good and I was not expecting it to have as
much fruit to it as it did. Many Cahors wines from France are inky
tooth enamel scraping wines that are overly bitter. This wine
changed my opinion of Cahors.
The White Burgundy tasting was also an interesting one. No’ one
liked the California Chardonnay and usually California wines do
extremely well in our tastings. The first place wine was the Chablis
and it was good, but the two that followed it in this report, the Etienne
Sauzet and J.M. Boillot White Burgundies were incredible. To me
there is no comparison. These two white wines can sit in your cellar
for ten years and only get better. I actually like the J.M. Boillot the
best, but I have come to really love his wines over the years for their
stony mineral and roasted nut qualities.
Our Viognier Tasting, How did the E. Guigal Condrieu not win?
Enough said!
For our Valpolicella tasting, I agree that there was little doubt that
the Zenato was clearly the best. I also really like the Masi, but I
think it did poorly with half the group because it was very different
from the other wines. If tasted all on its own, I think most everyone
would have also liked it a lot.
At our latest tasting, the Gewurztraminer Tasting Report, I found
myself completely torn between the Rene Mure’ from Alsace,
France and the Grey Monk from Canada. I really liked that
Canadian one. It really took me by surprise. In the end I did finally
settle on the Rene Mure’ as being the best.
So in retrospect, which wines did I like the best overall? Well in no
certain order I would say that these are the wines that absolutely
blew me away:
The Alain Michelot from the Pinot Noir Tasting Report
The Raymond Estates Cabernet Sauvignon
The Seghesio Sonoma County Zinfandel
The Mulderbosch Sauvignon Blanc
The J.M. Boillot Rully 1er Cru Meix Cadot from the White
Burgundy Tasting Report
The El Vinculo from the Tempranillo Tasting Report that got robbed
of an “A” score by some white wine drinker that really was even part
of our tasting panel. Still bitter about that as you can tell.
And the Domenico Clarico Arte from our Nebbiolo Tasting Report.
This might be in fact my favorite wine we have ever tasted as a
group. Amazing power and finesse!
If you get a chance to try any of the wines I listed or mentioned
above, shoot me an email and tell me what you think about them.
This way you’ll know if you like what I like or you think I’m a wine
idiot!
Cheers!
Shane Johnson
is our Monthly Tasting Report. I get asked a lot of questions about
these pages and how we conduct our tastings and make
recommendations quite frequently. We always bag the wine and
serve them “blind” so that no’ one knows, in theory anyway, which
wine is which. Is this the best way to conduct the tastings? It is
certainly the way the wine critics do them, but I am not so sure. I’ll
elaborate more on that in a minute. I do think for the time being that
our tastings should still be conducted blind and here’s why. From the
very first tasting, there became this little competition amongst us,
who would bring the best wine of the tasting. So naturally, there
would be an inclination for one to score his or her wine higher than
everyone else’s. I know that there have been several tasting where
I knew the wine we tasted at the moment was mine, but I have
always tried to be objective about it.
Our tasting results are not for the wine snobs or the cork dorks of
the world, rather, they are for the average wine consumer who just
likes something that is pleasing to the palate. Most people fall into
this category and that is why I think our tasting reports are great.
Our staff members that make up the tasting group range from “Cork
Dork’s” like myself and a couple of others, then we have a mid-
range of people that have been doing this a while now and have a
more developed palate and a reasonable sense of what they like.
And still we have more that are relatively new to wine at least from
an analytical point of view anyway. This broad group of tasters leads
to a very general consensus about which wine is the best in our
tasting. That is why I think our little tasting reports are perfect for
the average consumer.
Now the reason that I am still unsure about doing these tastings
“blind” is that this may or may not be the fairest way to conduct the
tastings with respect to the wine’s themselves. I’ll explain. Some
wines appear to be bland until you drink them with food and then all
of a sudden, they quite literally sing! Still others seem remarkable
until you eat a piece of cheese and then they close down
immediately. Some wines are incredible when you taste them all on
their own, but we you taste them side by side with others, they taste
so different from the rest, it for a lack of a better word, freaks out
your palate and they receive a lower score from the group. When
you go back and try these wines again on their own, you remember
once more, why you loved them in the first place, for their
uniqueness.
Over the past almost two years that we have been doing these
tastings, I have come to know a lot of our taster’s preferences.
Some really like the easy-drinking fruity wines, some like the wines
that are BIG and overwhelm the palate and still others hate any wine
that is very high in tannins. It is really funny because they are all
very consistent with their ratings. These are their preferences in
wines.
I’ve also watched some of our tasters evolve into full-fledged wine
snobs! I’ll give you one person as the perfect example. At our very
first wine of the month tasting, Pinot Grigio, one particular person
professed to us that he had absolutely no skills in dissecting a wine’s
attributes or knowing whether or not a wine was of great character.
He just knew that he either liked something or he didn’t. Well as the
months have past, he took it upon himself to really practice the art of
wine tasting and his skills have progressed to a point where he really
knows what he is doing now. It has been a joy to watch his wine snob
evolution. I get the biggest kick out of in no small part because he
has become the very person that he used to make fun of when we
first started these tastings. Just read his first Editorial and you will
see what I mean. God bless you Ian, you have become a wine snob
and you know it!
I have become a bit of a spoiled brat when it comes to tasting wines
too because I have been fortunate enough to have been exposed to
some really great wines. My preferences at our tastings are the
wines with the most finesse. Sometimes they are wines that are
currently high in tannins and maybe a little tough to drink right now,
but I see their future potential and I become awestruck. I love to
collect wines so I am always on the hunt for wines with great aging
potential and hence, there in lies my passion for these ageless
wonders. I also like the wines that bring something else to the table
other than just being easy drinking quaffers.
The wines that I like best at our tastings sometimes are the ones that
win everyone else’s heart over too, but quite frequently, I am alone
with the cork dork crowd on what we think is the best wine of the
tasting. Again, I would like to reiterate, that is exactly what makes
our tasting results great, because we have a diverse mix of opinions
that will appeal more to the masses than just a selected few. I
thought however, that it would be interesting to some of you, Cork
Dork’s in training to see what some of my favorite wines of our
Tasting Reports were and my comments on them.
I’ll start with our very first tasting, the Pinot Grigio Tasting Report.
The Montevina was a runaway hit to most people and I tended to
agree. It had a very pleasing taste and was quite fruity. Was it the
perfect Pinot Grigio wine? No, not at all. When you think of this
varietal, you tend to think of a bone dry, very acidic wine that is
totally about drinking with food. At least the Italian versions are
anyway. The Montevina was a crowd pleaser to everyone because it
did not need food to be enjoyed. Now one wine that did not fair very
well in this tasting has now gone on to become one of my favorite
Pinot Grigio wines. This wine failed at our tasting because of what at
the time was perceived as a flaw when in reality, was just a mark of a
great quality wine. This Pinot Grigio when we first opened it had a
fizz that kept bubbling up. People thought something was wrong with
it. Actually what that implied was that the winemaker did very little
to interfere with the natural process of the wine making itself. Well,
that is the watered down version anyway. I corked up all the bottles
after our tasting and went back and tasted them again the next day.
This Pinot Grigio really sang to me the next day and I wondered why
it was that none of us liked it the first time around. Today I buy it
frequently and I always enjoy it for its simplicity, yet remarkably
true Pinot Grigio characteristics. I have also come to know just how
great this Italian wine producer is with all of their other wines as
well. I am talking about the San Angelo Pinot Grigio from Castello
Banfi.
Our next tasting report was Pinot Noir and in case anyone is
interested, that is my personal favorite wine varietal and yes, I liked
this varietal the best even before the movie Sideways!
Unfortunately, you have to kiss a lot of toads to find a prince in a
Pinot Noir wine, but when you do find one, oh what a beauty it is!
The Bearboat was most people’s favorite. It was full-bodied and had
plenty of fruit to it. But my personal favorite was the one my French
Canadian friend, Chantal Pellerin brought, the Alain Michelot Red
Burgundy from France. Wow what a wine! It had tremendous
finesse and power and something else that none of the rest had, a
clearly defined personality. My opinion of course!
I’ll skip ahead to the Port and Champagne tasting report. The two
winners of this tasting were the two that I felt were the best too, but I
bring up this tasting report because of the two Port wines. This part
of the tasting was not really fair. We were comparing apples with
oranges. The Six Grapes Port is really a ruby style port that see’s
very little time if any at all in a wooden cask, whereas the Taylor
Fladgate was a 10 year old Tawny that spent ten years of it’s life in a
wooden barrel. They were two completely different styles of Port
Wines altogether and that is why this is one tasting I think we should
re-visit. My personal preference is the Tawny, but we should have
been comparing Tawny Ports to other Tawny Ports.
The Zinfandel tasting report was a source of a sore subject with me.
Yes, the Michael David 7 Deadly Zins was an outstanding Zinfandel
and deserved the accolades, but I just could not figure for the life of
me why no’ one else thought more of the Seghesio. To me the
Seghesio Zin was a Stud! Finesse, flavor, it is all at once intoxicating
and invigorating. I enjoy this wine on a monthly basis I assure you.
If you are new to Zinfandel wines, don’t try the Seghesio, you will be
ruined for life! You will think all the rest are weak and undesirable.
Okay, I guess you can tell I feel strongly about this one. By the way,
they make several different Zins, one of which is called Old Vine and
it is really wonderful!
I soldier on to our Sauvignon Blanc tasting! The first two on our list
were indeed very good and this was the first of two tastings we
conducted at Spice’s Thai Cuisine. The second being the most
recent Gewurztraminer tasting report. The first two had a leg up on
the competition because they paired extremely well with the food.
Having said that, I will tell you that the Mulderbosch Sauvignon
Blanc from South Africa is one of if not my most favorite Sauvignon
Blanc wines in the world. I have served it at wine dinners and it
always receives high praises from all that taste it. It is chocked full
of flavor and develops wonderfully in the glass. To me it was the
best!
Our next wine of the month tasting was our Malbec tasting report.
The Ben Marco won top honors for this tasting. The truth be told, it
would be hard to make a case against it winning the tasting, it was
indeed very good. I was a bit surprised that people liked it that much
because to me, it tasted very much like a young French Bordeaux
wine and if there is one thing that many tasters on our panel don’t
like, it’s earthy French wines. I would like to mention two other
wines that I felt were also outstanding. The Catena and the Clos
Coutale. The Catena was the first wine we opened and all you could
get out of the nose was a bouquet of vanilla from oak and a heady
whiff of alcohol. Then when we came back to it later, it had settled
down into something remarkable. This wine is one that needs to be
decanted. Let it sit for a half hour before you drink it. The Clos
Coutale was also very good and I was not expecting it to have as
much fruit to it as it did. Many Cahors wines from France are inky
tooth enamel scraping wines that are overly bitter. This wine
changed my opinion of Cahors.
The White Burgundy tasting was also an interesting one. No’ one
liked the California Chardonnay and usually California wines do
extremely well in our tastings. The first place wine was the Chablis
and it was good, but the two that followed it in this report, the Etienne
Sauzet and J.M. Boillot White Burgundies were incredible. To me
there is no comparison. These two white wines can sit in your cellar
for ten years and only get better. I actually like the J.M. Boillot the
best, but I have come to really love his wines over the years for their
stony mineral and roasted nut qualities.
Our Viognier Tasting, How did the E. Guigal Condrieu not win?
Enough said!
For our Valpolicella tasting, I agree that there was little doubt that
the Zenato was clearly the best. I also really like the Masi, but I
think it did poorly with half the group because it was very different
from the other wines. If tasted all on its own, I think most everyone
would have also liked it a lot.
At our latest tasting, the Gewurztraminer Tasting Report, I found
myself completely torn between the Rene Mure’ from Alsace,
France and the Grey Monk from Canada. I really liked that
Canadian one. It really took me by surprise. In the end I did finally
settle on the Rene Mure’ as being the best.
So in retrospect, which wines did I like the best overall? Well in no
certain order I would say that these are the wines that absolutely
blew me away:
The Alain Michelot from the Pinot Noir Tasting Report
The Raymond Estates Cabernet Sauvignon
The Seghesio Sonoma County Zinfandel
The Mulderbosch Sauvignon Blanc
The J.M. Boillot Rully 1er Cru Meix Cadot from the White
Burgundy Tasting Report
The El Vinculo from the Tempranillo Tasting Report that got robbed
of an “A” score by some white wine drinker that really was even part
of our tasting panel. Still bitter about that as you can tell.
And the Domenico Clarico Arte from our Nebbiolo Tasting Report.
This might be in fact my favorite wine we have ever tasted as a
group. Amazing power and finesse!
If you get a chance to try any of the wines I listed or mentioned
above, shoot me an email and tell me what you think about them.
This way you’ll know if you like what I like or you think I’m a wine
idiot!
Cheers!
Shane Johnson
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