A wine tasting with an interesting theme

For this week's tasting with AuZone - the wine society, Jack, the organizer of the tasting, fooled us all and gave us a new and most interesting tasting experience that I'd like to share as a tip for an unusual theme for a tasting. The theme of the tasting was announced as a tasting of wines that were a blend of two grapes, so when we discussed the wines after having tasted them we all tried to present educated guesses of wines with more or less equal amounts of two grapes, like Bourgogne Passetoutgrains, Dôle, Barbera/Nebbiolo, Sangiovese/Cab etc. Then Jack showed us the bottles and to our surprise the were all single varietal wines! He had simply produced the blends himself by mixing two of the wines in each of the carafes we had poured the wines from! So six wines gave six carafes with equal amounts of two different varieties in them. A very nice setup for a tasting, I'd say, and definitely a new experience! We were then, in fact almost able to tell which wines had gone into which carafes. We only switched two of the ingredients. Not too bad, I think. Maybe something to try with your tasting groups?

Here are the six wines, you might also barely be able to read the six blends on the board to the right:

Img_6358cr, usm70,rs33.jpg

Cheers,
Anders

So what would each of us view as the best pairs?
Barolo and pinot noir might be interesting, as their merits are often similar

Brunello and Cab is a safe-ish bet on the assumption that if it works for Super Tuscans?

Crozes-Hermitage and Tannat? Seems like a sensible choice

What were the actual blends Anders, and did any provide a shock (good or bad!)?

regards

Ian

What were the actual blends Anders, and did any provide a shock (good or bad!)?

The blends could be hinted on the whiteboard, Ian, but in fact I now realize there is an error there, since the picture was shot at an early stage, before it was corrected, here are the correct combinations:

Sangiovese + Cab S
Syrah + Pinot
Tannat + Sangiovese
Pinot + Nebbiolo
Syrah + Cab S
Tannat + Nebbiolo

I liked the blend of the 1996 Graillot Crozes with 2004 Gibbston Valley Pinot Noir the best, mainly since it displayed the pure aromatic character (Syrahsity!) of Graillot that I always like, backed up with the fruit and slight oak from the Kiwi Pinot.
The blend of the 1988 Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon and Graillot was the most popular with the group, but I felt the Cab to be too aged and killing the aromatic character of the Graillot. The Pinot/Nebbiolo blend was rather dominated by the dryness of the 1993 Barolo. The young 2005 La Tyre Montus (Tannat) was totally dominating both its blends. A good guess for the last wine was a blend of Nebbiolo and Barbera, witch one must way was a pretty good one.
Cheers, Anders

That is an interesting use of wine indeed!

Anders,

I would like to relate a similar happening at a birthday dinner my wine tasting group held some years ago at a local restaurant. We had almost finished three wonderful reds and were nearing readiness to open the sticky/fortified when the birthday boy announced how much he was looking forward to the next red (which we didn't have on hand). The six of us looked at each other a little quizzically but before we relay the bad news to our friend, Ian suddenly excused himself for a "nature call". So in his absence we quickly decided to assemble the almost empty bottles of 1982 Ch. Canon, 1985 Jean Gros Grands Echezeaux and 1982 Penfolds Bin 820 Cabernet Shiraz and we poured the dregs into roughly an equal parts elixir. Ian arrived back within seconds of this assemblage being placed in postion at his table setting. Ian started sniffing and sipping his brew with obvious glee and making the positive facial gestures to all and sundry. We kept everything under control until our birthday celebrant announced, with some gusto, "this has gotta be the wine of the night!" "So what do you think it might be?", I retorted. "Well, if it were possible, if you could take the very best characters of all the reds before it and put them together, this is what you'd have!" Good guess, wasn't it?