A few of the Denver winos got together informally on 9/30/03. Present were myself, Sideshow (WS boards), his brother, and a friend of his from WV, rmiller4 (WS boards). We took this opportunity to open some young pinots and watch the Cubs/Braves game on TV.
All wines were opened and decanted at about 2:00 local time. The tasting began about 7:00 and lasted until 10:00, meaning we followed the wines from fives hours in the decanter to eight hours. All wines were tasted single blind (we knew the labels, but not which wine we were tasting).
The lineup included:
2001 Karl Erbes Urziger Wurzgarten Spatlese for the preliminaries.
2001 Melville Clone 115 Indigene2001 Martinelli 7 Mules Vineyard2001 Merry Edwards RRV Olivet Lane2000 Kistler Sonoma Coast
The wines were tasted in flights of two. In round two of the tasting, the pairings were rearranged to better match the weights and flavor profiles per the judgment of the tasters.
The unanimous winner on this night was the Kistler, receiving all four first place votes. The Martinelli received three second place votes and a third. The Melville received two thirds and two fourths, and the Merry Edwards received a second, a third, and two fourths. Three of the four tasters guessed all four wines correctly, with the fourth swapping two of the choices.
I have two regrets from this tasting. One, I wish I had been present when these wines were first opened, to see what the nose would have been like. Second, I wish we could have followed them over the entire eight hours, instead of in this limited window. All of them kept changing in the glass, which I think bodes well for their aging potential. Because of the chameleon nature of these wines, I would expect notes from others to be different than mine, unless drinking them during the same window.
Mike