A few of the Denver winos got together informally on 10/01/03 to repeat the debauchery of the prior night. Present were myself, Sideshow (WS boards), davidandrose, and a friend of Sideshow from WV, rmiller4 (WS boards). This time, we decided to taste some Aussie Shiraz. The notes for this tasting are a little bit more cryptic and harder to decipher. With mrs. mbansek out of town, I hosted this time, which meant that Blake was awake for most of the first round of the tasting, occupying some of my time and distracting my focus somewhat. But in a good way.
All wines were opened and decanted at about 12:00 local time. The tasting began about 7:00 and lasted until 10:00, meaning we followed the wines from seven hours in the decanter to ten hours.
The lineup included:
1990 Domaine Pichot Moelleux Vouvray Domaine Le Peu de la Moriette for the preliminaries.
1999 Torbreck The Factor 1998 Rosemount Balmoral 2001 Marquis Philips Shiraz 9 2001 Shirvington Shiraz The wines were tasted in flights of two. The Torbreck and Rosemount were tasted together, as were the MP and the Shirvington. The tasters determined that the pairings made sense based on weight and flavor, so in round two the pairings remained the same as round one.
The voting for this night, number of votes for first, second, third and fourth:
Torbreck (1,1,1,1)
Rosemount (0,1,1,2)
MP (2,1,1,0)
Shirvington (1,1,1,1)
I guess it is safe to say there was a difference of opinion. The MP would have to be declared the winner, with the Rosemount finishing in fourth. I did not record everyone’s guess on the wines, but tonight I knew which wines were which (not blind to me, single blind for everyone else). My votes were MP, Torbreck, Shirvington and Rosemount in order.
All of the wines were enjoyable, but the Rosemount Balmoral was clearly outclassed. One voter commented that he found that wine almost unenjoyable.
Mike