Notes from a blind tasting with an interesting theme – the wines were all Rhone varietals, but were from other areas of the world.
2020 Terravista Roussanne – a bright wine from a BC winery, showing a lightly citrus nose, good fruit and a long clean crisp finish.
2014 Tablas Creek Esprit Blanc de Tablas – a tad darker than the previous wine and with a very nice nose of sweet apple, with good length – made from 72% Roussanne, 23% Grenache blanc, and 5% picpoul. Nice balance and smooth finish.
1997 Ojai Syrah Roll Ranch Vineyard – my wine and opened an hour before. Excellent nose of sweet dark cherry fruit and some spice and pepper and a smooth long finish. This could have passed in a Rhone tasting.
2004 Mas Doix Priorat Salanques – nose slow to open, but then showed some good fruit and a long slightly tannic finish. It qualified for the tasting as it is made from garnacha.
2019 Pasxa Syrah SJR Vineyard – from the Walla Walla valley, this was a dark wine with sweet jammy fruit nose with pepper hints that followed through on palate in the long smooth finish. Excellent wine.
2019 Epoch Estate Wines Veracity – mourvedre, grenache and syrah in this one, an obviously hot country wine, quite dark in colour and not very Rhone-like but good nonetheless. It continued to open up when left in the glass so should be decanted a while before tasting.
2018 Vinadores de Gredos Garnacha Dale – sweet ripe fruit nose, a dark wine with lots of acidity and tannin. Nice but needs some age to really show what it has.
A very interesting tasting and the first one of the year that we have been able to hold outside on the patio, watching the river going by.