And the winner of the blind rose flight last night was . . .

WINE TALK
1

First, we set the stage. Leo’s Blind Tasting Group (With Leo again not present) assembles for our monthly dinner. Rebecca and I were the hosts, so we provided all the wines. We had a flight of two roses and I decided I wanted a third, so I offered one of our Board participants who makes rose the opportunity to be added to the flight, after telling him what the competition would be. He said “bring it on,” so I bought a bottle of his rose.

5 blind flights plus a blind dessert wine. Bubbly/Chard/Rose/2007 Carlisle screw cap versus cork/2001 Rioja. Each flight had a twist and if I have time, I will write them all up, but for the rose flight, we required that the participants rank the wines first, second and third.

I did not rank them because I knew what each one was.

The results of the rest of the group was:

THIRD PLACE: 2012 Biondi Santi Rose of Sangiovese

SECOND PLACE: 2014 Sine Qua Non Gallanita

FIRST PLACE: 2016 Tercero Rose of Mourvedre [winner.gif] [welldone.gif]

Congratulations to Larry. On a 1-2-3 ordinal rating system, with 3 points for first place, it was Tercero 19.5; SQN 17.5 and Biondi Santi 11.

Personally, I liked the SQN a tiny bit better than the Tercero, but I think the Tercero was outstanding and obviously light years ahead in QPR. The Tercero is definitely a rose I would not mind owning, and since I just used up my only bottle, I guess I will have to order more.

2

great rosé.

3

Larry’s rose’ made me like rose’ all over again. It is his best work yet.

4

Yay for Tercero Rose!

5

That is why I love blind tastings.

6

Congrats Larry! Well deserved!

7

Jay,

Thanks for the fun tasting notes - I really enjoyed reading about the flight. And thanks for reaching out to see if I would want my rose put into the flight - as you probably know by now, I don’t back down from many flights :slight_smile:

Cheers.

8

The Francophiles in the group generally thought it tasted like a Provencal Rose. I rarely drink Rose so I cannot draw analogies, but it had flavor and complexity with meatyness to it. I do not know if I would have identified it as Mourvedre without knowing, probably not, but knowing what it was, my thought was “yeah, that makes sense.”