2010 Château de Pibarnon Bandol- France, Provence, Bandol (3/13/2019)
I played a dirty trick on my blind tasting group with this wine. About 3 hours prior to the tasting, I decanted two halves of the magnum into two identical decanters, and placed them side-by-side in the same flight. The comments were all over the place. Some said - same wine, different vintages - “wine two is clearly older”, “wine one is much more tannic”, while others thought same producer, two different vineyards. I was having a very hard time keeping a straight face.
Overall the wine showed very well, with some brooding black fruit, loamy earth tones, herbal elements, and just a hint of funk. Moderate tannins in balance with the fruit, so good aging potential, but not so harsh as to preclude pleasure now. I really enjoyed drinking it.
I’m impressed that they all wanted to say the same wine in different vintages or from different vineyards. I probably would have guessed one to be a bordeaux and the other a barolo. Blind tastings are humbling.
Seven and a half years ago, I did your dirty trick in spades for Leo’s Blind Tasting Group. In the morning, I took a double magnum of 1997 La Chapelle, double decanted 750’s worth with violent splashing back into a 750, carefully decanted 750’s worth into a second 750 and then vacuumed out as much air as possible, including seeing air bubble out of solution in the wine itself, and the recorked the DM with half the wine still in it and decanted a third 750 out of the big bottle into a small bottle. I then served all three as a flight. There is some dispute as to whether anyone had the slightest clue, with one of our members claiming he noticed substantial similarities. I do not recall anyone saying so.
Then last year, I took two bottles of 2007 Carlisle, one under screw cap and one with a cork, that had been sitting next to each other since they arrived at my house, and served them blind again to LBTG. They were unquestionably very similar but the group was almost evenly split on which was the older wine, before I revealed the “trick.”
I did this by accident during a dinner party 10 years ago: the group was already a couple of bottles in and I decided to do a Siduri PN blind side by side, same vintage but different region (I think Sta Rita Hills and Russian River Valley). I opened the bottles and had my wife decant into two decanters labeled A and B (I numbered the bottles 1 and 2 and asked her to remember which decanter she poured #1 into). Most of us thought the wines tasted very similar, but had subtle differences. It never crossed my mind that they were the same wine. It wasn’t until the reveal when I went to get the empty bottles that we realized that I had selected the same wine by accident.
That was an awesome tasting. Was that the one where you also opened the really old Madeira?
I looked up my CT note on that wine/from that evening, and I see I apparently really liked the one that was decanted the longest, though definitely did not have a clue about the theme of that flight.
Even when we serve wines blind, they are rarely if even without some context that tends to make our minds go the ways they go. In this context, it is implicit to everyone that these are different wines. Nobody would suspect the two decanters are the same wine, nor does anyone want to say “I can’t tell any difference between the two,” so the mind automatically searches for differences. If the wines had been served with the question “are these the same wine, or two different wines,” the reactions would have been completely different.
The other day, a friend served us 1998 Peby Faugeres and 01 Turley Petite Sirah Hayne Vineyard blind side by side. The Bordeaux was the easy one to identify (I guessed left bank Bordeaux from 96 or 01, so I was somewhat close). My first reaction to the Turley was that it could be zinfandel, or a modern-style Spanish wine, but in time in the glass, it settled down from its initial vanilla/blueberry nose and became less clear what it was. Very smooth, refined, tons of ripe fruit, not especially complex but well made, not hot or over the top.
The thing is, this particular friend has a heavy old world lean in his palate and collection, though he does have a number of elite Napa cabs like Harlan in his collection too. So, once I picked the one wine out as Bordeaux, my mind went towards what I know of my friend and also the idea of these two wines served side by side as a two bottle blind flight. It seemed to make more sense to me that this was some luxury Napa cab, rather than a zin, served as a “napa v. Bordeaux” comparison, so I made that my guess.
If a different person had served me the Turley by itself, or in a flight with California zins, petites, and so forth, I’m sure I would have had a different guess.
I think it’s more than this. If anyone has seen the show Brain Games, I recall a similar theme was explored on one of the episodes. Maybe one of the neuroscientists out there can chime in if I’m getting this right or wrong: Our brains are hard wired to look for differences, contrasts, change perceived through the senses. We are looking for it without even knowing it. So much so, that we sometimes fool ourselves by making them up, which would only really apply to the situations above where the save wine was split without any different treatment.
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