Reegs’ Zin Tasting

Reegs had a wine tasting the other night. It was a blind tasting and the theme was Zinfandel.

the tasting table after the reveal

For blind tastings with my SF peeps what we do is bring the bottles in to the host’s place and immediately put them in paper bags. Then on a piece of paper or index card we enter a lot of information: name of wine, varietal, cost, where we bought it, AVA and maybe a little bit more info depending on what’s going on. [my apologies if I've talked about this before but some of you had asked]

Then the host or the assistant will take the bottle and give the bag a random number and note that on the card, then they’ll hide that information from the guests.

Each guest is then given a glass and an index card and pen. The scoring system is declared and explained (we used a 100 point scale w/ no damn decimals) and everyone can start tasting (and eating!). At the end of the night, the host or assistant uses a google docs spreadsheet and tabulates the scores. Then we have a reveal.

Some of the friends are a bit more serious than others so they’ll be pretty clear if they’re competing or not. (Most of the time my SF crew is competing with each other). Saturday’s tasting was a Zinfandel tasting. And most of the crowd was serious. That said- all of this is to have fun, have some good wine, and discover some wines that are new to you.

btw- be careful if you ever try to taste 22 Zins (after having pre-contest wines) in rare 90 degree SF heat. Drink lots of water, do tiny pours and spit out a lot.

At Saturday’s tasting, I wound up getting 2nd place out of the 22 wines we tasted! But….  I cheated. I brought a Zinfandel blend. I’m cool like that.

btw- It was a magnum of Limerick Lane 1023 – which is a 50% Zin / 50% Syrah

Click ‘more’ if you want to see the full list of what the finishers were- I’ll just list the top 10.

btw, my favorite wine of the night was  Pinot Gris that we had before the tasting – Toulouse from the Anderson Valley. Damn good.

btw, I know I’m missing a lot of the info, I’ll update when I get the full list from Reegs or Kenny-

10/9 (tie) Biali Grande ’07
Franz Hill
8 Saxon Brown
7 Cameron Hughes 109 (Alexander Valley)
6 Zyntheses (quite nice and only $8!!)
5 Biali Monte Rosso
4 Joseph Swan
3 Ridge Geyserville ’04
2 Limerick Lane 1023
1 Ridge (I wrote “Or Ridge” but I don’t remember what I meant to write, maybe 06?)

I’ll get the full names and vintages