Blind Wine Tastings Rule!

For Thanksgiving this year I decided to “trade up” on my typical Turkey Day pastimes. It’s the wine country. There is more to life than football in these parts – namely wine! I would like to claim that I came up with the brilliant idea of holding a blind wine tasting but the credit belongs to an up-and-comer of CIA’s culinary program - give this kid A+ for overachiever! Each guest at the orphans/out of towners Thanksgiving Dinner that I attended was instructed to bring one bottle of 2006 Cabernet in addition to a soggy green bean crunch casserole type side dish. Buying wine as a new resident of the Napa Valley is a stressful affair because I’m forever out of my own league. After one too many hours spent trolling the aisle of BevMo and Trader Joes I gave up and opted for a brand name that I was familiar with – Rodney Strong. I thought I would impress and annoy people by bringing a wine from the Alexander Valley. Napa people don’t seem to drink or talk too much about “the other” valleys that make up the “wine country.” I hoped the ensuing controversy would cloud my ineptness. When I arrived at the party, while most clacked away in the kitchen the two ringleaders of our blind wine tasting were hard at work collecting the Cabs, plastering them with tin foil to hide the obvious details, logging wine name, region, and price and finally tagging each bottle with an identifying number. We had eight wines in total with eight people tasting (2 wusses remained nameless when it came time to tally the votes). When all the evidence was hidden the wines were placed on the dinner table, ready to be tasted before we dove into our bird. Up until this point I was dining with an admittedly cordial and friendly crowd. Twenty minutes into our taste test tensions began to rise. While I expected to learn something about wine I did not expect to learn unsightly things about human nature, which is exactly what I soon got. The more that we tasted the more vocal people became. Booze does that to people I guess. We were each given simple wine ballots with a numbered list to write notes next to each wine bottle contestant and to ultimately rank our top 3 favorite wines in order of preference. Some were more reserved with their comments “good nose, nice balance, yummy…” others not so much “thin, no good, 2 Buck Chuck, light weight pansy wine, yuck!, sucks!” Ours was not a diplomatic crowd. As the heckling began things got even more interesting. The dainty soon talked trash and the boisterous got demur when some surprising trends started to unfold. As a mildly objective by-stander I made it my business to observe human behavior. I took notice of the following facts. People were wildly polarized in their passion about their favorite and least favorite wines. There was also unity amongst two wines that almost everybody agreed on, as stellar and tasty (my translation not their words). Then, as far as all the other wines in between, people had vastly differing opinions about what they liked and disliked. Not to speak in clichés but one person’s passion was another’s poison. That is where the heckling high-jinx started to unravel further. One of the wines that I was waving my fork at with glee was being poo-pooed by several of my neighbors and a wine or two that others thought were “rank” and disgusting” (their words, not mine) someone else thought was “divine.” People bordered on belligerence when someone suggested ripping off the foil that hid the bottles true identity prior to everybody finishing their taste testing. I can’t be a hundred percent certain, but I am about 99.9% sure that some flicked forks, others flung food and certain people had to pin down other people when they threatened to taint the results too soon. I also noticed that some of the less boisterous of our bunch seemed to get swayed over time by the opinions of others, some sort of twisted drunken peer pressure that caused people to back down from their wine choices when friends balked, while others hopped on a wine’s bandwagon when folks waxed on about their preferences. OK, I guess I have dragged out the suspense for too long by this point so wait no more. For obvious reasons I will not get into specifics about the wines that were not in the top 3, because, well I value my life. What I will tell you, is that you would be surprised to learn what wines were dubbed “rank” among many other randy references and how expensive those wines were (upwards of $99). I will note that price points ranged from $3.99-$125.00.

Here are the vinos that ran off with top honors of the night:
#1 – Rodney Strong’s Alexander Valley 2006 Cab $25.00 (yes Virginia there is a Wine Clause)
#2 – 3 – there was a tie for second and third favorite:
Venge Vineyards 2006 Family Reserve $125.00 & Mica’s 2006 Cab $60.00

Other brands that were in the running included Bennett Lane, Rare Earth, Reverie, Rockbrock and Sbragia. And you cynics in the crowd, in case you’re wondering, I had nothing to do with the voting I’m just reporting on it.

For me, the most remarkable result of all, the one that should be your key take away from this ranting and rambling story, is this. Wine is very much a personal game and even more of a personal preference. When we are not biased by the media, our neighbors and even our birth right, something remarkable happens. People simply drink and enjoy wine the way it was meant to be – one sip at a time, for the sheer pleasure and joy of it. In all the hubbub here in the Valley it seems that we all too quickly forget that wine was meant to be one of the simple pleasures in an otherwise complicated world. Just like people, no two wines are created equally nor do they hold the same meaning for anyone, other than yourself. So stop reading all the wine mags, shut the lip of that needling neighbor of yours, knock your mate out of your ear and listen to the only voice of reason that matters – yourself. You’re the one drinking it so, so slurp whatever you damn well please and enjoy it!

And in closing (finally!) I will admit it here first. Apparently, I am a cheap date. One of my top three wines was rock bottom on the price and popularity scale. I blushed for only a moment when I learned of the results, and then I reminded myself of something important. I moved to the wine country to get rid of all the “woulds and shoulds” of my world in favor of living my own version of the American Dream, one which includes drinking the wines of my own choosing.