I hosted a little wine tasting today with a group of friends, some of whom were into wine, some who were not into wine. The wines were tasted blind, and consisted of Cabs and Merlots. I also through out the highest and lowest ranking given to each wine.
Since I was providing the wine, I focused primarily on eight fairly well known QPR wines. At the end, we ranked the wines from best to worst. Ten people returned their ranking sheets, and we tallied the following ranking from best to worst:
The number in parenthesis was my personal ranking, though I did not taste blind, since I was hosting the tasting.
Interestingly, after being told that Charles Shaw was among the wines they tasted, several people were able to identify the Charles Shaw. When asked how, they said that it was the wine with the sweetest taste, so they assumed the cheap wine would be the sweet wine.
The Falesco, Umbria, Merlot was clearly the wine of the night in terms of being ranked consistently high, while no one rated it last.
One note on Charles Shaw. The quality of the wine is extremely variable. I actually bought a couple of bottles before the craze hit, and they started churning out the stuff. Since then, I've tried other vintages, and just did not taste the same. The early 1999 (sounds wierd) version of Charles Shaw is fairly decent drinking wine, but the more recent versions are not that great.
[This message was edited by WineW8 on Mar 09, 2003 at 02:39 AM.]
Very interesting tasting, I love these blind ones as sometimes the results are quite shocking. Chateau Souverain occupies the largest holding of wines I have, I was very disappointed with the '99 version both times I had it.
Posts: 1761 | Location: Folsom, CA | Registered: Oct 20, 2001
The Grand Estate regular bottling, which you can usually get for about $6.99, and which was rated a WS 88. Strangely, it did not taste as good as the last two times I had it in 2002. Can it be fading already?
I was surprised that the Marjosse did not show well despite the WS 86 score. Parker rated it an 88, and many folks have raved that its a great value. I personally thought that it lacked body, tasted thin, and did not have much of a finish.
On the other hand, the Beaumont was surprising, and lived up to its WS 89 score. I did not think it would show well, since the reviews indicated that it should not be drunk for a few years. Many of the folks did not have experience with Bordeaux wines. Nevertheless, the Beaumont was fairly intesting, and a good value at about $13.00 at Bev & Mo. It had a nice bit of fruit, a medium finish and an earthy bouquet.
Finally, the Falesco Merlot was great. Only $12.99 at Costco, yet it was consistently ranked high by people who were into wine, and those who weren't. This is a wine where Parker had it right at a 90, while WS was significantly lower was an 85 or so. However, WS was right on with the note that said that this Merlot tastes like a cab. Heck, the Falesco had more tannin than the Columbia.
