Tasting, tasting

[shewhomust]

After talking about it for some time, we finally organised a wine tasting on Sunday. We aimed to have a dozen people (we were eleven, in the end) each providing a bottle of wine with its label obscured. We weren't over-serious about it - the offer of pens and paper was firmly declined - but everyone had made an effort to find a wine that would be both good and interesting, and in among the conversation we did try to identify what we were drinking. And we drank a lot of very enjoyable wines.

durham_rambler came over unexpectedly consciencious, and cleaned and discarded the bottles before I could note down all the details; but we've managed to reconstruct most of the list between us:

Torresoto White Rioja

Whenever I buy white Rioja, I find it bland and insipid, but Nigel and Colleen often serve it, and it's always, like this one which they brought, clean tasting, but full of character. This one was from Marks & Spencer.

Ca'vit Trentino Müler Thurgau

Sue was just back from Italy, and had, I think, bought this while she was there. I would never have guessed the grape. It had a strong taste of honey, but with a slightly oxidised edge: say, burnt honey. The oxidation was clearly intentional, reminiscent of sherry - and the wine was, apparently, recommended as an aperitif.

Curious Grape rosé

An English wine, which durham_rambler had bought from the vineyard in Tenterden. My original plan had been to serve this first, but was persuaded that pink came logically between white and red. I should have stuck to my original plan: it was bone dry, very fresh, and it, too, would have made a great aperitif. After the fuller flavoured whites, it tasted a little thin. Grapes, for the record, were pinot noir, seyval blanc, and dornfelder (does this mean they made the rosé by mixing red and white?)

Rioja

Nigel and Colleen told us that they had gone to a great deal of trouble, tasting their way through all of Marks's Riojas before settling for this one. We all appreciated their sacrifice and enjoyed the wine immensely: it wasn't hard to identify, but the fact that we'd already had the white was a big clue...

Fleurie

All Gail-Nina would tell us was that this was from the Tesco's Finest range. It was light and smooth and I hadn't a clue what it was. Obviously, I'm not drinking enough Beaujolais.

Barolo

Jackie brought us more Italian wine. I want to say that the most striking thing about it was its age, which sounds derogatory. But so much of the wine we drink is big and fruity and made for drinking young, that when you drink a mature wine, it really stands out. We had a couple of wines from the last millennium (indulge me - I'm not likely to get many more chances of saying that!), and they did broaden the range of flavours.

Flagstone Writers Block pinotage

Chaz brought this, in part because he couldn't resist the punning name. It had none of the burnt rubber taste that I dislike in pinotage, but was big and soft - I would have taken it for New World syrah.

Montes alpha syrah

helenraven's contribution, which I didn't identify as rapidly as I should have done, despite having read her description of it; or perhaps in part because I had read her descriptio of it, and was expecting a leaner, more leathery (I suppose French, syrah-style) shiraz. I found it not unlike the pinotage, big and soft and flavourful. (These are all good things).

Wolf Blass President Selection cabernet sauvignon

J & A had been creative in hiding the labels of their wines; where the rest of us had struggled to find plain paper, they had cut up the newspaper. This bottle, A's choice, was labelled "Tusk Force", with a picture of elephants. It had such a fruity, blackcurrant flavour that I spotted it as cabernet, even at this late stage in the proceedings!

Domaine Etxegaraya (2003)

or, what we did on our holidays. This Basque wine, which we bought from the producers (and about which I still hope to post, with photos) was my choice: a very dark, tannic red (60% tannat, 40% cabernet franc, according to the leaflet).

Château Belgrave Haut-Médoc 1996

or Chair of Human Georgraphy, to use the name on the label J had provided with it, was the classiest item of the list. Older than the Barolo, but more structured, an elegant balance of tannin and fruit, and a powerful wine.

I'm pleased with how it went: there wasn't one wine there I didn't enjoy (I think I still like mine best, but then my tastes are notoriously wayward), people seemed to get on well together, there was talk of "next time" - and I get a buzz out of being able to sit eleven people round my table (OK, round the dining room and kitchen tables pushed together) and given them a chair, a plate, a wine glass and a waterglass each.

Comments

[helenraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much for the list. An invaluable reference.

But I think you missed out the house white, i.e. Wine Number 1. I know you know exactly what it was, but I'd like a reminder. Please?

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Sure; I was thinking of it as Wine N°0, and just trying to list the bottle-per-person wines.

It's a sauvignon blanc from the Cave du Haut Poitou (http://www.lvo.com/GB/GASTRONOMIE/VINS/VIGN/POIT1.HTML), which we bought on the way back from Angoulême (http://www.bdangouleme.com/). Wine-Searcher.com (http://www.wine-searcher.com/regions/haut-poitou/1) list stockists, including one in this country, who are charging quite a bit more than we paid at the Cave Co-op.