WTN: Last night's Beaujolais/Chenin tasting

[Jenise]

So last night was our neighborhood tasting where 54 tasters ran through three chenin blancs, five Beaujolais and one Oregon gamay. I'll bet more than half of them had never tasted either before. And since 7 of the 9 wines were French, it was an evening with huge disaster potential.

But, guess what? It was a great evening! They loved the wines! And one each of the chenins and the Bojos were run away winners! And even more amazing, their first place wine and my first wine were the same wine (that NEVER happens).

For the pre-tasting self-pour wines, I put out the 2010 Rosa del Pontin chenin blanc from Washington's Yakima Valley, which went over as well as I thought it would, as did the NV Champalou Brut from Vouvray. But the big winner in this group was the wine I feared they wouldn't 'get', and which I thought was flat-out amazing, was the 08 Silex from Domaine d'Orfeuiilles. It had so many flavors it was like a disco ball going off in your mouth. Every citrus fruit on the planet, lots of herbs, fantastic minerality, magnificent acidity--it was all there. $14 wholesale, so probably $18-20ish retail most places.

For the Beaujolais, I served all 09's. Thivin Brouilly, Foillard Cote du Py, Diochon Moulin-a-Vent, DuBeouf Morgon Jean Descombes, and Girardin Clos de Bief. The outlier, Dominique Lafon's Evening Land 'Celebration' from Oregon, was a 2010. 1st, 2nd and 3rd place went to the Foillard, the Oregon wine, and the DuBeouf respectively. In our group, every wine always gets at least one first place vote. And sometimes first place goes to one wine by close to a mile. But the Foillard taking first place with 30 1st place votes is unprecedented. And most deserved: that's perhaps the most complex Beaujolais I've ever tasted. Just as surprising as me agreeing with the majority, or should I say the majority agreeing with me, was the success of the Oregon wine. It didn't win so much on the first place votes as apparently winning almost every 2nd place vote in the room except mine. Probably because other than the Foillard, it was the most different from the rest of the pack.

Interesting night.

"...different from the rest of the pack." Ah, that's the key to success in a neighborhood wine tasting. When my monthly group of not-quite-so-geeky-as-I-am wine tasters gets together, the outlier is more often than not the wine that comes in first. Slip a good domestic Syrah in with a half dozen even betther northern Rhones, or a good Croze-Hermitage in with even better WA Syrahs, and guess which ones win the gold medals.

[Jenise]

"...different from the rest of the pack." Ah, that's the key to success in a neighborhood wine tasting. When my monthly group of not-quite-so-geeky-as-I-am wine tasters gets together, the outlier is more often than not the wine that comes in first.

It's understandable if unfortunate, isn't it? My group also tends to favor wine A about 50% of the time. In setting up, my partner who had not tasted any of the wines randomly put the Oregon wine in slot A. I quickly switched it with the wine next door so at least their first taste of Beaujolais didn't bond with something that untypical!