This is the second installment of my blind tasting series. In preparation for the Level 2 Sommelier Certification Exam I have been practicing blind tasting where I attempt to deduce the grape varietal, the region it comes from, and give a close guess at the vintage of the wine. This is not an easy practice and I have been learning a lot from these posts as I go back and watch myself go through the progressions.
Blind tasting is a great way to train your palate and also a great way to spice up your love affair with wine. I’ve also done blind tasting wine parties were all of the guests bring a mystery wine and well, things unravel quickly and they are a lot of fun. For those interested here is a link to the tasting grids, http://www.courtofmastersommeliers.org/pdfresources/certtastinggrid%20Tasting%20Grid%20Student.pdf
First the good, and in my opinion there was a lot more good this time. 1. I was able to accurately describe and pinpoint the key grape varietals in the wine. Not bad despite the fact that I added a grape. 2. When it came to naming the region I had already arrived at a preconceived conclusion. This may be wrong of me but it only seems natural to have a good idea of what you think the wine is based on past experience, even before going through the progressions. Once I had all of the facts in front of me and I headed into the initial conclusion I used that information to rule out any other possibilities (in this case, the correct answer). My point here is that when I started looking at other possibilities I went to the correct region and actually mentioned the correct wine. I really only ruled out the correct answer based on the concept that it wasn’t “classic grape, classic region”. This was a serious misstep on my part because Bolgheri wines do have a very distinctive character and this wine truly exhibited that profile. 3. When it comes to naming vintages it’s fairly simple to determine whether a wine is young or has some bottle age. It’s another thing to really understand the difference between vintages from certain regions. With that said, if you are incorrect in your deduction of the region then the best you are going to achieve is a close proximity to the correct vintage. So regardless that I guessed the vintage correctly it was nothing more than a lucky guess. Still putting this in the win column.
The bad…To be honest I feel pretty good about this evaluation. Having dismissed the correct answer as being outside of the parameters of the “game” I think Bordeaux was the only other realistic option. Would I have guessed Bolgheri if I would have thought it was an option? I really can’t say. I can say that I was noticing a lot of things about the wine that were reminiscent of Italian wine, Tuscany in specific.
The Stumbling Sommelier 