First of all a shout out to Otto (a great contributor to this board in my opinion) and his post on why (specifically New World) CF sucks.
A couple of salient quotes:
“Big, ripe and impactful wines with lots of oak.” Yep check that one off!
“In such massive fruit bombs, you really can’t see any varietal typicity - just generic, anonymous big wine flavors.” Not so quick to come to this conclusion.
I think he makes a great point that CF does well in cooler climates and questions why basically force something where CS would suffice and probably outperform. I think it is a great take and worthy of challenging with one’s taste buds.
All the wines were double decanted a few hours before the tasting and brown bagged. I tasted them all and as usual it didn’t really help me that much. My tasting group is not super sophisticated but they are not neophytes either. One has a strong love of Italian wines including Brunellos which means if anyone really found the Chinon better than the rest he would be the one. Didn’t happen. In fact the Chinon was last place for all seven of us. Does that just mean we all love the baby taste? I didn’t find the CFs spineless, they remained fresh but certainly not brisk like the Chinon. Another surprising point was no one really liked the Realm either - also close to last place. And it certainly had a bit of tannin in it, that gave it a stronger finish than the others and seemed more typical of a New World Cab.
But the four new world CFs did share a lot of similarities - they were kind of soft and plush, very rounded but with nice velvety finishes. There was a bit of restrained flowers and herbs to them but certainly not any MOPs to be found. I would argue that there remained a bit of typicity although in deference to Otto certainly muted.
If you wanted to bash them certainly you could say the four were a bit generic. I called the Realm and the Chinon blind (although I had tasted them earlier in the day.) I thought the Bevan was the Dakota Shy, the Dakota Shy was the Dorsey, the Dorsey was the Detert, and the Detert was the Bevan.
Unanimous winner was the Dorsey. Probably the Detert was second place but we didn’t do a formal score and there were fans of all of the four. Just no fans for the Chinon nor Realm.
TRB never seems to fail me as a winemaker. His worst efforts I like, and his best are sublime. The Dorsey was the only wine that was finished at the table. Perhaps we all just have crappy new world palates but I can tell you the Dorsey CF is hitting on all cylinders. I hope Tom Garrett keeps selling him some fruit. I will continue to buy.
