13 May 2007
"AMICI WINE CLUB" Founded!
Named after one of our first wines and in the spirit of good friends, the “Amici Wine Club” met for the first time this weekend and it was a complete success. For a while I have been wanting to start a wine tasting group with friends in an effort to simply learn more about wine and share the fun that is wine with friends!
The club has an intimate 4 members, though I don’t anticipate growing beyond 10 people (if we even reach that number) to simply keep the meetings simple and close-knit.
In our club, we alternate host and the host chooses a theme. Everyone then brings a bottle under $20 corresponding to the host’s theme. The bottles are bagged in brown paper bags to make the tasting blind and avoid preconceived notions on the wines.
For our launch meeting, we threw out the $20 limit (the first meeting was a special occasion to be celebrated!) and our host named Napa Valley as the theme.
Our first two wines were:
- 2002 Amici Napa Cabernet Sauvignon (my contribution) (NS90)
- 2003 Behrens & Hitchcock Napa Valley Merlot (NS92)
SCORES AND NOTES ON ALL AMICI WINE CLUB BOTTLES
Both wines were EXCELLENT 90+ tintos in my book. The Behrens & Hitchcock wine particularly interested me when tasting blind; while being very excellently well rounded and displaying traits that I’d associate with the flavor profile of Zinfandel or Cabernet, I was shocked to find out it was a merlot. See the above links to see more detailed notes in addition to notes from others.
Next theme: Tuscany!
-Nico