Blind remote WineMakingTalk tasting

[NorCal]

United by the interest in making wine at home, this forum has enabled a few relationships that I hold dear.

The collaboration of our little group with the intent to share wine making best practices and general life joys and tribulations has been a joy.

We have a blind wine tasting upcoming, where @crushday is the judge. He has been tasked and accepted the challenge to rank the two sets of samples of wine sent to him by me, @Busabill and @4score and palate extraordinaire son. Being a somewhat competitive group, the maker of the wine with the lowest ranking has a penalty.

 

[NorCal]

I should have added that all the black label wines were all made from Cab Franc grapes from the same vineyard in Northern California.

The red label wines are any variety wine that the winemaker wanted to enter. @crushday is to rank each set of wine favorite to least favorite.

 

[Chuck E]

The long distance, ZOOM tasting we held last year was a highlight in my winemaking career, and I was so glad to participate with the folks I met here. @crushday I envy you. I would love to figure out a way we could have a grand wine tasting between all of us.

 

[NorCal]

We had our tasting review last night and it did not disappoint. There was a twist, that I couldn't reveal, for reasons you will understand. The last time @crushday was in Nor Cal picking up grapes, he gifted us cases of wine. What he didn't know was that one of the samples in each of the sets were his wine.

The samples were @4score, @Busabill, @crushday and myself. One set was all Cab Franc and the others were any variety the winemaker wanted to choose.

Crushday put effort into each sample and provided his synopsis in the call. as well as his prediction of the wine maker.

The end results:


I have a post on the making of the Cab Franc 100 point blend, as well as the soft Petite Sirah here on the forum.

Example of the thought that went in to each tasting:




Fun event with some good friends enjoying our hobby. There is definitely taste preference bias when being scored by one judge, as 4Score wines tend to have more oak the others and Crushday noted that heavy oak is not his preference. The second twist is that I'm pretty sure that the 6 wines that Crushday judged will be entered into the CA state fair this year. We shall see if the UC Davis judges agree with Crushday's assessment.

 

[sour_grapes]

What he didn't know was that one of the samples in each of the sets were his wine.

Love this so much! That is great.

 

[wood1954]

Great idea, I’ve shared wines with riceguy and Vern here in Wisconsin, it would be nice to send small samples of cold hardy wines to West coast winemakers and get some feedback and spread word about cold hardy grapes.

 

[crushday]

@NorCal did a wonderfully sneaky thing including my wines unbeknownst to me. It was a fun event and one I think we should consider replicating. Of course, as @NorCal rightly pointed out after our event, the future opportunity of surprisingly including wine from the judge is over. Just judging the wines was a blast.

@wood1954 - if you're serious and can package 4oz bottles of wine and ship to me and @NorCal PM both of us. I'm glad to supply my address and distribute. I'm sure @NorCal would be game too.

Here's the full deck over two posts...

 

[crushday]

Second half...

 

[wood1954]

I do have some bottles I use to send test samples to the lab. I would love some feed back. Pm me addresses and I’ll mail them out.

 

[Nebbiolo020]

Wine tasting is always a good time I send bottles back and forth of wines I have made to friends and get feedback all the time.

 

[wood1954]

I sent my wife to the post office and the clerk heard some gurgling and asked what it was. I never told my wife to say it was vinegar so they refused it when she said it was wine. Took it to fedex where it was twice as much and takes longer to get there.