Pittsburgh BYOB gathering #10

Don
Did the group agree this is "non-blind"?
Also, are you going to pair the wines?

There are some great opportunities for side by side comparisons.

I'm good with whatever the group wants. We did decide early on that this one would be non-blind.

Given that we could have 18 at this one, it would make sense to give some thought to how to "share" the wine.

Hawk - do you want to volunteer to come up with pairings and a plan for tasting?

dontime

Dontime, do you know if there wil be any kind of stems in the pre dinner appetizer gathering room? I could bring a white or two...you guys usually do starter wines?
--Tantore

Tantore - I had floated the idea of having a NZ SB for the appetizer round. Last time the stems were in the PDAGR (pre dinner appetizer gathering room), so we could have them do that again, plus put a second stem with the dinner table set up.

Group - thoughts?

I vote for having a few whites with appetizers so we can get situated, wait for everyone to arrive, and warm up the palate before we go to the big dawgs!

That worked well when we did the Rhone tasting.

The more wine the better as far as Im concerned ;)
I dont have any SB, Im not deep in whites at all, but if you decide to do that, the Ramey Hyde chard tastes like a SB on steroids (only chard I buy besides Kistler.) I do have a bunch of German Riesling and would bring that if its just open to bring whatever white...

Ramey Hyde Chard, DEFINITELY!

Excellent. I'm fine with whatever white anyone wants to bring. I'm not deep in white either but will bring a Larkmead SB to contribute.

Man - what a night it's shaping up to be!!!

BTW Tantore - I'm doing a big champagne tasting at the Wine Barn (Orlando) tonight.
J2K - I plan to meet Anne from CT at the Wine Barn tasting.

Don,
She's cool, I met her at CT Wine Gathering in Philly. Tell her I said Hi!

J2K,
Sat next to her at the tasting. Lots of fun.

Champagne:
Comte Audoin de Dampierre NV "Curvee des Ambassadeurs" Premier Cru
Jean Lallement et Fils NV "Cuvee Reserve" Grand Cru
Gaston Chiquet NV "Tradition" Premier Cru
Heidsieck & Co NV "Diamant Blanc"
Pierre Gimonnet & Fils 2002 "Fleuron" Blanc de Blancs Premier Cru
Alfred Gratien NV Brut Classique
Gosset NV "Grand Reserve"
Louis De Sacy NV Brut Grand Cru
Veuve Clicquot NV "Yellow Label"

Quite a night.

Dontime, I know nothing about champagne...the only I own are a couple of bottles of 96 dom because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Im all about Cali syrah, cali cabs, cali pinot, some aussie shiraz, cali ps, and CDP. All red, all big, all the time. I own a fair ammount of Auslese and Spatlese riesling and a bunch of sweeties. Just starting to stick my nose in Spanish wines. Well see where that leads...
--Tantore

Since this is a large group, how about doing "flights" of four or five bottles in each flight. One flight could be comparing the Mollydookers & K Vintners. Another could be the four highest rated wines. Or we could spread out the highest rated wines putting one in each flight. Use CT ratings.

Just some suggestions, but I'd like to take a little time with each flight to appreciate the wines.

PS. I will be decanting my wines for about 2 hours before the event.

Tantore: "All red, all big, all the time"
...I'm beginning to like this guy already...

ps -flights, or some type of phased/paired tasting as we did with the Rhones sounds like a good idea to me. Hawk, sounds like you are all over this one.

Ha nice name bigred. The annual berserkerfest (the gathering for wineberserkers.com) was held last August at Loring Wine Company in Lompoc...Brian Loring and I have very similar taste in wine and its somewhat of a running joke because Loring makes pinot. When it came time to decide the theme of Berserkerfest (first one I attended) Brian asked for my input (because he knew what I would say) and so the theme became "Big, Slutty Reds" It was awesome.

I'm happy to give a try to setting up the flights.
Here's the list of what I think is coming (which is amazin BYW).
2006 Two Hands Shiraz Ares
2006 Glaetzer Amon Ra
2006 Mollydooker "The Boxer"
2005 Mollydooker "Enchanted Path"
2004 Wolf Blass Platinum Label
2002 K Vintners "The Beautiful"
2002 K Vintners "Morrison Lane"
1998 Rosemount Estate Balmoral Syrah
2007 Two Hands Bella's Garden
2007 Mollydooker "Blue Eyed Boy" Shiraz
2006 Glaetzer "Wallace"
2006 Sine Qua Non-Raven
2005 Kilikanoon Reserve M
At least four people need to list their wines. There may be two offerings of Bella's Garden.

I thought we'd go with flights of 4 wines each. May have an odd ball flight of 3 or 5 wines.
Don said the table will be a "U" set up, so I thought we'd start with 2 wines at each end of the U and work them around to the other end. That gives everyone the opportunity to compare two wines at a time.

I like other's ideas on pairings, but my thought is to use the CT ratings to group them generally. I'm a little concerned that with such powerful wines we could get palate fatigue.

Palate fatigue??? whats that??? ;)

Since it looks like there will be multiple wines from a couple different wineries, rather than base it on CT ratings I'd be for mini-flights from the same winery. The three Mollydookers, the two Two Hands, the two K Vintners, etc. Then it's just a matter of where to put the remainders, probably together into one or two additional groups.

Also, I proposed bringing either the Kilikanoon OR Two Hands Bella's. If someone else is offering to bring Bella's please speak up and then I'll be sure to bring the Kilikanoon to avoid a duplicate.

Thanks

Mark - I probably caused some confusion as I listed the Bella's from you in my initial listing. You were clear that you were thinking of bringing one of three potential bottles. So I think you are the only one with Bella's in the game - which would remove the Kilikanoon from the list.

That being said - I would really like to have the big boys go head-to-head. I am working on a list of what is coming and what professional and CT scores are available. It's already clear that we have some amazing wines in play - Ares, Raven and Amon-Ra all score in the mid/high 90's professionally and have numerous CT scores.

We need some more attendees to opine!

Admin - have you noticed that the message count on this thread skips 31-60? Page one ends at message 30, page two begins with message 61.

It doesnt really matter how they get mixed. These are all full bodied, fruity, high alcohol wines. I think FWIW that unless the Amon Ra, Ares and Raven all show to their potential, the BEB could be a sleeper. MD wines never shut down and the only MD wine I like more than BEB is the 06 Velvet glove. I like 07 BEB better than 07 VG at this point, thought that is a function of youth. I would definitely put all the MDs together simply because they are similar tasting wines (same shiraz grapes, distributed into one bottling or another based on a subjective scale Sparky calls "fruit weight") The rest, any which way is fine with me.

PS I will likely bring a Carlisle Papa or a Saxum as well, not enough Cali representation!

PPS we are working on a possible Mollydooker dinner in September in Meadville (about 2 hours north of you guys) It will be at a steak house up here and Sparky (and hopefully Sarah) will be in attendance if we can get the logistics worked out as part of their US tour. There will be a blending seminar followed by a tasting of the entire 09 lineup including COL EP and VG. I have no financial stake in this this but I am friends with the guy who owns the restaurant, and I am helping him coordinate with Sparky's team because my buddy is a spokesperson for MD. We are hoping the schedule works out, but we still havent had a confirmation. I am mentioning it because we will have about 100 guest limit. So far, they dont have a scheduled stop in western PA or Cleveland, where we met them years ago, so if you would be interested in something like this, drop me a line because I dont know how fast it will sell out. I dont know the price yet but I would guess $50. Ill post when we know for sure if this is happening.

Tantore - I'd be in although I am traveling quite a bit in September. If the dates work - I'm there with Ms. dontime.

If we are going to arrange them in groups/flights we need to know ALL the wines that will be there. I think we were still a few wines short which have not been declared yet. So if you haven't yet, confirm your Shiraz/Syrah!!!!
I don't really mind how they will be arranged, I'm just really thirsty right now!

Yes it's a bug that's been around for a while now. The fix is an upgrade to the Forum package which is a not-insignificant undertaking. There's only one other bug (also small...a space added into long URLs in posts) so upgrading has been low on the list of priorities.

Hard to believe this started with a dozen of us on the back porch at the Tomato Pie last summer! Tantore may not know what palette fatigue is but I remember the Pinot tasting & we overlooked some pretty good Burgs bby the end of the evening. With the ammo on this list we'll be lucky if we can tast lemonade by dinnertime!

After searching to find something that was 18% or more to keep up with the trend I decided to try something more restrained & will bring an '04 Rustenberg Stellenbosch Syrah.

This should be fun.

Palate Fatigue at a pinot tasting? 25 Kosta Browne and 25 Seasmokes maybe :)
I was just kidding jburd, my palate tends to die at around 25-30 wines. If Im swallowing, which I typically do, Im way drunk by then ;)

Hey, I didn't say "drinking fatigue" ;) A tired palate is a small price to pay!

Latest count:

Bigred 2
Jonradus 2
jlburg 2
J2K 1
tonypoli 2
Mark 1
Hawk 2 (3)
dontime 2
Tantore 1
ecola 1 (2)

16-18

I show 13 bottles of red with one individual undeclared. That count includes only the Sine Qua Non-Raven from Tantore. He has indicated he might bring others.

Tantore has also indicated he will bring a Char for pre-dinner drinking and I will contribute a SB to that cause. Any other whites coming?

Colonial Estate Explorateur Old Vine Shiraz 2005

Is anyone bringing tasting notes sheets? And if so, since we know most of the wines already, how about pre-filling them in with the wine names???

This is going to be an epic event...