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LATEST TASTING NOTES 

March 30, 2005
Theme: Southern Rhone
Wine: Steph and Becky
Host: Terri

     Our tastings never have news pegs, but this one -- first conceived as an evening with Châteauneuf du Pape -- had a completely unintentional resonance with the big story of the week. We tasted some really great wines. Too bad the dollar is in free fall.
     Tonight's menu included a Moroccanish chicken dish, snow pea and prosciutto salad, couscous and various cheeses and breads. --D.R.

     1) "Sicily." 2000 Domaine Raspail-Ay Gigondas Reserve Rouge; blend of Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre. $28 at Cork & Bottle. Average 14.63; range 13-16. Apparently there are two styles of Gigondas -- one that's not trying to be Châteauneuf du Pape, and one that is. This one is the latter. Pam thought it smelled like toffee; Steph said the nose went from caramel to chocolate to coffee. But there was a pleasant earthy undertone to it, too, maybe even a tiny hint of gasoline. I was the high scorer on this one, and I thought it had an amazing amount of body given the restraint of the fruit. Others found it smooth, well-rounded, delicious, drinkable, balanced and complex. Steph initially said it didn't have enough fruit, but then kept revising her score upward. (Fortunately, Gary brought his laptop.)
     2) "Andalusia." 2002 Château de Saint Cosme Gigondas. $27 at the Wine Seller. Average 14.56; range 14-15. This is the other style of Gigondas -- brasher, bistroish, countryish, the French equivalent of "hey, y'all, we're hicks." And we loved this one, too. Musty in the nose at first. Fruitier than the other Gigondas, though none of us specified which fruit. Steph remarked on its brightness. Changes a lot in the glass; the initial pucker fades as it opens up. "I feel the love with it," Gary said.
     3) "Patagonia." 2002 Perrin & Fils Vacqueyras "Les Christins"; 75& Grenache, 25% Syrah. $20 at Cork & Bottle. Average 13.13; range 12.5-14. In another tasting, this might have been the favorite of the night. Reminded Pam of boysenberries and blackberries; Steph of "good cherry cough syrup." She thought it didn't aim as high as some of the other wines but lives up to its potential. Some people did think there was a sameness about it once you had a few sips. (Le Blog de La Famille Perrin may or may not be worth checking out. I can't read French.)
     4) "Basra." 2001 Domaine de la Solitude Lançon Family Vineyards Châteauneuf du Pape; 65% Grenache, 20% Syrah, 15% Mourvèdre. $35 at Cork & Bottle. Average 12.88; range 10-15. This was the second wine we tasted, and most of us found it unusual. I thought it was pleasantly grapey and a little jammy, but it also had a hint of orange zest in the nose. It also seemed pretty tightly wound; it tasted like dark, unsweetened chocolate and left a pleasant little buzz on the tongue. Steph and Becky (who knew what it was) thought it blossomed and turned pretty smooth. Charles compared it to Vicks Formula 44 but liked it. Speaking for the (relative) naysayers, Terri thought it tasted green and overly alcoholic. "Too much but too little at the same time," Pam said.
     5) "Chiapas." NV Little James’ Basket Press, Louis et Cherry Barruol. $14 at Cork & Bottle. Average 11.88; range 11-12. A baby Gigondas, produced by the folks at Saint Cosme (see "Andalusia," the second-ranked wine). You might call this a wine with a small footprint, because it's lean and restrained. Dry, acidic, tannic, maybe with some tobacco and light roses in the nose. Some disagreement over which berries were in it: Steph said cherry, raspberry, strawberry but definitely not cranberry; berry master Becky agreed with me that cranberry was more like it. Whatever. It went very well with Terri's chicken dish. Gary found it musty. Reminded Chip of Communion wine. "Textbook naked Grenache," Jon of Cork & Bottle had told Steph and Becky.
     6) "Antarctica." 2000 André Brunel Côtes du Rhône Villages Rasteau "Les Sambiches"; Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre. $15 at Cork & Bottle. Average 11.5; range 10.5-12.5. Pam thought this was a fruit bomb but not cloying, and it reminded Becky of green fruit salad and star fruit. Sweaty and rindy, I thought. Charles said it was almost a dessert wine, and if he ordered it at a restaurant he'd be disappointed. Gary disliked its "cheap White Zinfandel sweetness." Apparently Rasteau is up for its own AOC, but for now it's officially a Cotes du Rhone Villages.

     Interesting fact: The person who liked these wines the most was Steph, whose average score was 13.75. The lowest average scores came from Pam and Chip, who tied at 12.67. Not a huge range, and still pretty high.
     Chip was the first to figure out that the fake names all refer to southern outposts.

 

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PAST TASTINGS

2005
March 30: Southern Rhone
January 20: Bonny Doon (notes TK)

2004
December 1: Interesting American reds (notes TK)
August ??: Pinot Noir (notes TK)
June 17: Summer wines
May ??: Beyond Retsina -- Greek wines
March 16: Stephanie's Travels
January 20: Cabernet Franc

2003
December 10: Bubbly Fest III
November: New Mexico (info lost)
October 14: The Election Hangover (brought to you by Napa and Sonoma)
June 4: Pairings, a.k.a. Food and Wine Club
April 21: The Thai Food Experiment
March 21: The Fruits of Repression -- Red Wines from Argentina and Chile
February 20: The Other Spain
January 16: California's Central Coast

2002
December 4: Winter wines
November 13: Washington and Oregon reds
October 10: Living in Zin
August 28: Dr. Strangewine, or How I Overcame My Fear and Learned to Love Chilled Wine
July 24: Off the beaten path
June 19: Summer wines
May 16: The best of the best (a.k.a. the wine club playoff smackdown)
April 25: Southern Hemisphere
March 21: Germany, Austria and Alsace
February 20: Spain
January 8: Witches' brew -- blends

2001
November 28: Second Annual Bubbly Fest
October 10: Low-rent wines
August 24: Summer wines
April 18: Italy
March 14: Critics' choice
January 31: Syrah/Shiraz and friends
January 10: French reds

2000
December 6: Champagne and other sparkling wines
October 4: Australia
September 6: Sonoma reds


METHODOLOGY

We taste these wines blind. We put a fake label with a fake name on each one. Each of us then rates the wine on a scale of 0 to 20, and we average the scores to come up with a rank. 

Still, it's wise to keep both the ranks and the scores in perspective. There are typically 10 to 12 people rating each wine, so differences of a tenth of a point or so might reflect a single taster's spur-of-the-moment decision to assign a wine a score of 12 rather than a 13. In practice, differences of a point or more reflect a real preference within the group for one wine over another; differences of a few tenths of a point should be taken with a grain of salt.

One other thing: It's obvious that where a wine falls in a tasting can affect the score it gets. Even if we like the first wine, most of us score it pretty conservatively in the hope that the next wine might be even better. (If that happens, you can't score the second wine fairly  if you've already given the first one a score of 18.) And when turnout is low, and there are a lot of wines to be tasted, some of us are pretty happy by the time the last wine comes around. The tasting notes mention a few instances when those dynamics seem to have affected the rankings.

Happy drinking.