La Canada or Bust!

I would like to thank a very good friend of mine Jon and his wine group for allowing me to taste all of these beautiful wines. Jon's group gets together from time to time and comes up with a "Wine Theme" for the tasting. Jon was nice enough to invite me to attend this time around. There were 7 winos present and 10 bottles of wine poured. We brown bagged all the wines and tasted them 3 / 3 /2 and 2 at a time. I actually live quite far from Jon so I had to make sure that I poured no more than 1 1/2 ounce per tasting being that I didn't want to pass out on his couch after 10 wines. Jon also happens to be a client of mine so I made sure to be on my best behavior.

The theme for this tasting was California Cabernet's and we rated the wines using the Robert Parker scale. The twist was that Jon created a handicap system depending on the cost of the bottle. I don't recall the exact math equation that Jon used but If bottles were above $100 per, they received a negative handicap while bottles under the value of $100 in increments or $10 dollars below received a positive handicap. The handicap was added to your final Parker score to determine a winner. Everybody seemed to be in the same frame of mine being that no bottle was above the cost of $60.00. I brought to the tasting 2004 Freemark Abbey Napa Cabernet. I purchased the wine this past Saturday. I have not bought much Cabernet in the last few years and I didn't get a chance to poke around in my cellar to see if there was something I could of brought. The Freemark Abbey was a wine I had experience with in the past. Somewhere in my cellar are a few bottles of 2001 vintage. Just have to find them someday. Most of the young Cabernet that I do own, I want to age out a little. Either way my thought was to bring a wine that was a bit more of a Bordeaux style. I thought I would be good enough to pick my own wine but I wasn't. All the wines that I tasted were pretty good. I was a bit hard on most of them, with only 2 wines scoring above 90 points. Most of the wines scored in the 80 point range with 1 wine scoring 77 points. The Freemark Abbey that I brought I scored 82 points. It's good to be brutal on the wine that you bring. Then again when you are tasting wines blind anything can happen.

Here was the list of wines we tasted in the winning order:

The number one wine was 2001 Keenan Cabernet priced at $20.00. I actually rated this wine 85 points which was third highest on my list. It is a good feeling that a 2001 / $20.00 bottle of wine won the competition. Yeah it might of been that we tasted this win first and that we were all real thirsty, but I will agree with the group that the wine had a good structure and the $20 price tag just makes us all warm inside.

The rest of the wines are as follows: (2) 2005 Sequoia Grove Cabernet $20.00 (3) 2005 Pellegrini Cloverdale Ranch Cabernet $28.00 (4) 2002 Robert Mondavi Oakville Cabernet $32.00 (5) 2002 Rober Mondavi Napa Cabernet $18.00 (6) Freemark Abbey Napa Cabernet $27.00 (7) 1995 Robert Mondavi Reserve Cabernet $60.00 (8) 2006 Honig Napa Cabernet $37.00 (9) 2006 Stags Leap Artemis Cabernet $48.00 and last but not least was 2003 Robert Sinskey Cabernet at $55.00 per bottle.

The Sinskey to me was the worse wine of the night. I gave it 77 points. The wine had a strange nose and on the palate came up a bit short for me. The "Robert Parker Scale" gives up to 35 points in bouquet and finish and that is where I scored this wine the worse. It is kinda ironic that the Sinskey was the second most expensive wine on the list. Is it too structured for our palates maybe?? I don't claim to be an expert by a long shot, but there have been lots and lots of times when I thought a wine was horrible but Parker gave it a 90 plus score. I guess you have to follow the old saying "Like what you drink - Drink what you like". Have fun with it!

I will end this Blog post with the 2 wines that I loved the most this night. They were the 1995 Robert Mondavi Reserve Cab and the 2006 Stags Leap Artemis Cab. I gave the Mondavi 92 points and the Stags Leap 91. It is funny that these 2 wines are separated by 11 years of vintage. The Artemis was a bit crucified this night coming in second to last place. The $48.00 price tag was third highest, but the Artemis to me grabbed that Cedar Box, Chocolate, dark berry fruit that reminded me the most of a French Bordeaux. The Reserve Mondavi followed the same paths. This wine showed all of those French Characteristics that Napa Valley wants to emulate so very much. The rest of the wines showed a lot of those California Big Fruit flavors. That isn't a bad thing to me. California has a style of its own.

I had a great time tasting all of these wines. I so wish that I had a bigger and closer to where I live group of friends that could get together like this once in awhile, tell stories and enjoy each others company while sharing in some great wines.

Thanx Jon

Cheers!