Another monthly tasting. This wine tasting was approached with some apprehension as most of the wines I would've liekd to have included were no longer available making it all the harder to qualify the tasting. However what wines were available made my mouth water. The rare Terraces, Antipodean, Stonyridge, Providence and Esslin merlot were all included. It would have been nice to include La Strada, Dry River, Stonecroft , Craggy Range Syrah's and some others but they simply weren't available.

So the conditions of the tasting are as follows-
-Must be a NZ red of non-pinot noir origins.
-Tasted blind with no information regarding the varietal, style or region.
- Tasted at room temperature (around 18 degree celsius- probably a little warm.)
- tasted in ISO's.

Here the notes

Esk Valley reserve Merlot

The Terraces Esk Valley

Vidal reserve Cab Sav

Kingsley Cab Sav

Stonyridge Larose 1999

Te Mata Coleraine

Antipodean

Matriki Quintology

Providence

Babich WR Syrah

Vidal Reserve Merlot

Goldwater Esslin

Matariki Reserve Merlot

Selaks Drylands Merlot

Bilancia Merlot

So there you go!

Jeremy...

Read all your notes.
You must be walking on air based on some of those scores!

Some tasting, huh???

It was a great tasting. Other than the wines I mentioned at the top of the page these are probably amongst NZ top Cab dominant wines. There would only be another ten or so I would put in this league that weren't tasted.

They would include
Te Mata Awatea
La Strada Reserve Syrah
La Strada Clayvin Syrah
Stonecroft Syrah
Dry River Syrah
Ata Rangi Celebre
Te Motu Cab Merlot
Goldwater Cab Merlot
Trinity Hill Black Label Cabernet
Clearview Reserve Merlot Malbec
Brookfields Gold Label Cabernet
Brookfields Reserve Cabernet

The tasting was of 112 NZ reds. Some were absolute crap!!! Those above were the top wines. Then the scores dropped away.

Others worthy of mention
Villa Maria Reserve Cab Merlot 2000 -89 points
Matakana Merlot Cab Franc 2001-89 points
Fenton The Red 1999- 88 points
Framingham Merlot Malbec 2001- 88 points
Sileni Estate Merlot Cab 2000- 88 points
Penisular Cab Merlot 1998 -88 points
Mission Jewelstone Syrah 2001- 88 points

So it was a pretty big selection.