Missing duck horn mag and one other.
Thanks, @PeterB! Awesome night.
Turns out Merlot can be great! When blended with other things 
You didn’t like the Masseto? 
*or you get Masseto.
Adjusted
But I personally preferred the Trotanoy ‘95.
Wonderful evening. My top 5 were:
1995 Masseto, this was by far the best of the night. When poured blind, it immediately stood out as WOTN (at that point) and was going to be hard to beat. Big thank you to @J0hnEhrl1ng for the generosity for bringing both 1995s, thank you!
1995 Trontanoy
2015 Miani Merlot
2016 Three Palms Magnum
2018 Chappelet Merlot (best bottle under $100)
The best value of the night was 2016 Clos des Jacobins.
Jay gets the award for bringing the two most undrinkable wines of the night. The first one I called as communion wine and pinned it at $5. I was too high, it was only $3.99 and called Hectare. Don’t buy. And the second was 2000 Dr Konstantin Frank Merlot, I called this one 1978 North Fork merlot… this wine was terrible and I’m not sure it was ever good, but tastes like 47 years old. We did have one corked wine, one of mine was oxidized and trash, and a lot of them just needed more air or time.
finally… did we make Merlot Great Again? I am going to say no. Obviously if you want to buy Masseto, you will #MMGA, but so many $90-$175 bottles of merlot/merlot dominant wines just didn’t show their best. I think for the price you can find better Cab, Malbec, so much more… On the bright side, we’re probably going to get Greenland and we’ll send Jay there to broker the deal after he forecloses on Jell-o Man.
Stay tuned for the next dinner… thank you everyone
The $3.99 Hectare is apparently the Total Wines answer to Two Buck Chuck. TBC is unavailable anywhere within 75 miles of my house so I could not get that. Hectare is an NV Merlot and was the cheapest merlot I could find in the the NY Metro area. It did not disappoint. It was as horrible as I expected.
The 2000 Dr. Frank merlot is a wine that I bought at the winery. IIRC, Dr. Frank’s grandson was in the tasting room and he explained that the wine was an experiment to see if they could get merlot to ripen in the Finger Lakes, with the limited days of warm sunshine. They had dropped fruit during the growing period down to the point where there was only one bunch per cane. It was economically unviable and at best marginally successful, but I bought 2 bottles in deference to their scientific approach to grape growing. I did not expect it to age into Massetto or Petrus, but it was worth a try. It did not.
Neither, I must point out, was close to as good as the 2009 Kapcsandy Roberta’s Reserve Merlot. Someone else brought a younger bottle of the same cuvee. Both were good and were in my top 5.
There were a lot of mediocre to poor merlots. You just can’t make merlot great again when it was never great the first time it was elected. We once served a 25 year old Petrus and a 25 year old Pahlmeyer made by Helen Turley, blind, to a world renowned wine personality. He preferred the Pahlmeyer. So much for spending a lot of money on merlot.
GSM for the same price usually wins.
Doesn’t that mean that GSM is objectively better than merlot, ignoring the fact that drinking the same thing every night may be boring?
This tasting showed what I have always said: Merlot is an excellent blended grape. Merlot with rare exception is great when it is on its own.
Merlot often times can come off unidimensional but can work wonders when blended with cab or sangiovese. Merlot has a certain suppleness to it that can make wine softer and more inviting.
To me merlot is great again as long as it is part of the show and not the whole show.
With Masseto being the exception, I think it was clear to most people that in each flight the right bank bordeaux’s were the clear winners in each flight.
here here
Looks like it was a great night! Was Masseto was the only monovarietal wine from Tuscany for the evening?
Oreno is a blend… I believe the answer to your question is yes
I was going to bring a 2010 Galatrona instead of the Roberta’s Reserve. Galatrona is 100% merlot. I changed at the last minute because the Galatrona did not appear to satisfy the Grand Poo-Bah’s requirement for $100 minimum on the top end wine. If I had know that someone was bringing a Masseto, I would have brought the Galatrona, but I would have been surprised if the Masseto did not exceed all others. I think the Masseto showed very well, but it was not at the top of its game. It was not close to the one served at the LBTG dinner (IYKYK) about 10 years ago, which was one of the greatest wines I have ever had.
2010 Galtrona is definitely valued over $100! I was surprised that more of the heavy hitter Tuscan Merlot weren’t in the photos. Apparently 6 of the top 10 most searched Merlot on wine searcher are Tuscan.
Sell that wine Joseph!! The Masseto was amazing but Bordeaux really seemed to be the preferred bottle for most of the tasting. It was a fun learning experience.
no way… Masseto was the WOTN by far… just more Right Bank brought
Yes, that is a better way to put it,
CT listed the auction price of the Galatrona at $90 and I did not look further than that. I bought it 9 years ago for $60.