15 April 2007
A vertical tasting (of course, done blindly)
A recent offering from wine.woot.com (good site, check out the weekly deals) for a vertical trio of wines spawned its purchase and an eventual adventure toward 2 firsts for me:
- I had never done a vertical tasting before (vertical tasting = same wine, different vintages/years)
- I had never had a wine labeled Petite Sirah (I had had Petite Sirah before in blends, but not as the primary varietal), and this trio was a set of California Petite Sirah
More specifically, the wine offering was the Kent Rasmussen Petite Sirah Vertical Trio. The vintages were 2000, 2001, and 2002.
The idea of such a tasting, at least in my opinion, is to be able to note how a vintage can have an impact on a wine, especially if it goes through the same production process over the experimented years. Additionally, I think it helps to note how a wine can evolve, its differences on the palate older vs. younger.
With a few friends, and for extra fun, we tasted these wines single-blind, just to avoid any possible preconceived notions before tasting.
When all was said, done, and revealed, I had ended up tasting in the following order: 2002, 2001, then 2000.
My first surprise (which in retrospect I don’t think should be a surprise) was how similarly these wines tasted to each other. I guess my expectations were set too high in terms of differences between the wines. Don’t get me wrong, there were some good differences between the bottles, but in essence, I was reminded that this was the “same” wine.
For my full tasting notes, please see Cork’d: 2002, 2001, 2000
Very quickly, upon blindly tasting the 2002 (and after tasting the others), I had guessed correctly that it was the youngest – still a great wine, but just a tad harsher and more in-your-face than the others. The 2001 was actually my favorite; I enjoyed the overall the smoothness and balance of flavors. I found the 2000 less expressive when tasting (especially fruit-wise), but still well balanced. When tasting blind, I was not able to distinguish which between the 2000 & 2001 was actually older.
I highly recommend doing a similar experiment in tasting, you will learn more about the wines and more about your own palate and preferences. Lastly, more points for blind tastings!!!
-Nico
I recently did this same tasting (Last weekend actually). Very enjoyable i must say but i thought that the 02 was garbage. The ’00 was good and the ’01 was by far the best. Everyone i drank with agreed that the ’02 was no goo, maybe i got a bad bottle?
— MattVL Apr 27 #
hey Matt,
Thanks for commenting. I agree with you that the ’02 was at the bottom of the trio (and the ’01 for sure was the top), but I’m not sure I’d call the ’02 garbage, I did end up giving it a 91. I think that with a couple hours in the decanter, the ’02 could have definitely improved in balance, because it certainly packed a punch of flavor (just not all integrated well). Maybe you did get a bad bottle; I certainly wouldn’t mind having another ’02 bottle.
thanks again for visiting the site,
— Nico Apr 29 #