AWS Wine Tasting, October 22, 2005 - Home of Jack & Cindy Sproenle

Call Me A Cab(ernet) (notes supplied by J.T. Mayer)

This tasting started with a bonus. We participated in the National Tasting Project which had a surprise to it. Notes were collected for the project so this is by memory only. We were given three bagged wines to taste and informed only that they were Italian sangiovese wines. Then we repeated the process with three bottles identified as California cabernet sauvignon wines. We did a quality vote between the first three and the second three. I believe we did this using the 20 point scale. With some participants having little judging experience, there was a lot of variation in the scoring. Most interestingly, there was consensus that we found discernible differences with each trio of wines. Generally people as a group liked the second or third in the trio more than the first. At this point the surprise was revealed. We had the same wine in the three bottles but the preparation only varied. Bottles 1 and 4 were simply opened and served. Bottles 2 and 5 were put into a decanter, poured back and forth several times between two decanters, and returned to the bottle. Bottles 3 and 6 were poured into an open baking pan and left for a set time, possibly one hour, before returning to the bottle. The basic outcome of all this is that aerating the wine really does change aroma and flavor and tends to have a positive effect.

For the main event, wines were bagged for blind tasting and poured three at a time. After tasting nine wines we did a best quality vote. After prices were given we had a best value vote, after which the wines were revealed. I found the last four wines to be very close in overall quality and rated them all between 19 and 20 points. I rated the first five much lower. Personal favorites are put in parenthesis below. Notable was the Oberon, which is resurrected from the disbanded Mondavi empire and may have originally been headed for a much more expensive bottling. This has potential and is a "sleeper" of great value. As usual these are my subjective opinions.