Confessions of a Wino

Hosting a dinner party? Got a few sample bottles that you’ve been meaning to taste for ages? Want to follow up an amateurish and inconclusive post on Grand Cru Chablis? A perfect storm for a blind tasting. The brief is simple: take a Chablis Villages, a Premier Cru, and a Grand Cru and see if there is a meaningful, that is to say pecuniarily justified, difference. All wines were from the 2010 vintage.

The bottles, elegantly disguised in blue carrier bags whose former contents were the meat for tonight’s main course, looked like three prisoners in front of a firing squad. As the wino of the party, to be blunt, I could feel the rifles aiming in my direction. I was papping myself. Here are my notes in the order we tasted.

Wine 1: fruity but full bodied,very smooth and tastes well oaked. Not so much flinty steely pebbles as rich plummy apricot and honey. I’m guessing this is the GC
Wine 2: bit steelier but lovely acidity, not oaky. Grassy more than fruity and a little bit of afterburn in the throat. This is probably the Villages.
Wine 3: appley, some flint, quite rounded – I think this is the PC.

Wine 1 in the centre of the podium turned out to be Christian Moreau Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos, a deserved winner but at a price. Imported by Thorman Hunt & Co the RRP is £33.80.

Wine 2, on the right, is Vincent Dampt Chablis and a bronze medal winner which might explain the difficulty in differentiating it from the Premier Cru. Corney & Barrow do this at £13.95.

Wine 3 is the Premier Cru, this one a Christophe & Fils, Fourchaume that is imported by A & B Vintners and the RRP is £14.58.

The main conclusion to be drawn is that a blind tasting livens up a dinner party and focuses people’s attention on the wine. It’s a lot of fun. The consensus was that Grand Cru Chablis clearly stood out and is worth the extra for special occasions. Telling the difference between the Villages and the PC was very difficult and the scores were split, which is reflected in the close price range, to be fair.

So, that may be another amateurish analysis, but at least this time, it’s conclusive.

Maybe this is the future of wine marketing, maybe it is just a bit of fun.  Either way, PR société, Agence Clair de Lune of Lyon, France has created a bit of a stir with its Secret Wine promotion.

85 wine bloggers from around the world have entered a competition to guess the “appellation” of 3 mystery red wines, mailed out over the last week.

There is bluff and counter bluff going on with bright green replacement corks in non-specific bottles, and apparently randomly numbered labels.  The fact that the PR company is based in Lyon might lead one to think that the wines are from the Rhone or Burgundy.  I am not 100% convinced that they are all even from France, but I am making that leap of faith as a starting point.  Even having made that assumption, is it one appellation showing off its variety, or a region showing diversity, or is something more devious going on?

Psychology works.  There is a mood on the Secret Wine website (voters choices are shown on the home page) that tends towards the South of France regions.  The wines arrived with a note advising the correct drinking temperature was 14°.  This smacks of Rhone rather than Languedoc to me, but I am going to try to ignore all the misleading signs apart from the country of origin.

I’ve never done a blind tasting and come out any better than looking a complete fool, but fools never learn to keep their gobs shut, so, with little trepidation, here is my take on the wines.

714 – the petrol and elastic bands smell from the glass is what I always get from Monastrell/Mourvèdre.  Could this be a barking mad Bandol?  If it wasn’t a French PR agency I would have said a Monastrell from Barcelona.

390 – tastes like a classic Bordeaux blend to me – let’s go for Cotes de Bordeaux.

079 – I wondered if this was primarily a tough but flowery Cabernet Franc so I Googled where this grape predominates and randomly chose Chinon as my guess.

I am clearly wrong or I would now be in possession of the prize holiday.  I can’t wait to find out how much egg I need to wipe off my face.