The Ultimate Tasting at La Cave du Petit On December 4 organize a small informal tasting of all types of wine we've done with the harvest of 2010, the natural wine bar called at La Cave du Petit (who unfortunately just closed forever )
pending: photo 1 (can not find the pictures of the tasting) The purpose of the tasting was partly social
, ie, have a great time drinking some wine with good company, and ers technical
part because I hoped to get opinions and reviews (feedback) about the wines, especially on what should be aged in barrels, and may mix varieties.
So a couple of days before bottle a bottle of each wine, straight from the tanks.
pending: photo 2 (can not find photos of bottling) Furthermore, to make the taste more interesting, I made special labels for each bottle, with just a stunt. Only after tasting, would reveal that it was wine or variety. I thought this way would be more fun and make us to think more!
These are the wines that we tasted:
1. Airen. Normal fermentation, our wine 'star' we hacienda from the beginning, 8 years ago
2. Airen. Carbonic maceration, a
experiment 3. Airen. On the skins, another experiment (wine 'orange')
5. Tempranillo, grown for us in Carabaña, another came 'star' we've been doing for 6 years
4. Tempranillo organic grapes purchased from a resident of Madrid
6. Graciano, organic grapes purchased from a resident of La Mancha
7. Shiraz, organic grapes purchased from a resident of Madrid
8. Petit Verdot; organic grapes purchased from a resident of La Mancha
9. Garnacha, organic grapes purchased from a neighbor of Avila
Why we bought organic grapes so the neighbors? Well, for several reasons:
1. We were a bit boring to work alone with Airen and Tempranillo year after year and always do the same wines. We wanted to experiment and learn about other varieties. Life is short! Y 'is born something else. " So next year we bought grapes may or may not
2. We are looking for our way forward. One way or another we want to grow and increase production while maintaining the same quality. Buying grapes is one way to do that we wanted to try
pending: photo 3 (did not find pictures of the tasting
pending: photo 4 (can not find pictures of the tasting) Conclusions? " Results? Well! Well things did not go exactly as expected! I was imagining a more orderly process, ie the first wine tenderers to instead, the comments, and would proceed to the next wine, etc. Take notes and then would order, etc. There
, wit me! What happened, of course, was that everyone started talking at once, people are divided into small groups of 2 or 3, they began to talk with your phone, put / remove / change the music, go to the bathroom , go eat something ... .. Then we started to take the bottles out of order, we started to mix in small groups to maintain 3 talks loudly at once, etc. In short, a mess. The tasting turned into a feast, and we had everyone very, very good!
pending: photo 5 (misfiled Have photos of tasting) The opinions (minimum majority) that I could pick up after 3 hours of tasting / party (without having written a single note) were: White
: The Airen (1) and (2) can be drink now, but the Airen (3) needs more time.
Some, I really liked the Airen (1) because I had a bit of needle was very fruity on the nose and mouth, and had a surprisingly long finish. Others are not so much because it seemed like it lacked acidity and had too much residual sugar.
Reds: None of them are ready to drink now (December). Which seemed all would be fine as a young wine (no oak) was the Tempranillo (4). Most also thought that the Garnacha (9) would be fine as a youngster, and no barrel.
Now what? Well, so far nothing. We will let pass the cold winter and in February / March organize another tasting / party to see how it has evolved red wines. (The white, yes we are going to drop in December, as we do every year)
