I almost had to
A few Wednesdays back I got a call from a buddy of mine. This wasn’t necessarily atypical of him, though with COVID-19 it had been significantly less frequent. Prior to the global pandemic, I’d get a call from him at 5:29 p.m. on any given day of the week with a simple question “what are we getting into tonight?” which roughly translated into English meant, we are hanging out and drinking alcohol in some way, shape, or form, and you are going to be a part of it.
Like me, he grew to love and appreciate blind tasting wine. Which if you’re not familiar, is essentially where you drink a glass of wine without having any knowledge of said wine prior to being served and try to guess what the wine is.
Drinking a wine “blind” (you don’t really have to put a blindfold on, that’d be silly), really makes you think about the flavors of the wine, its structure, and look at what the liquid inside the glass is telling you, not the label.
For example, and do try this at home, if I served you a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon (unless it was really off-the-wall), you would drink it and pick up on the typical Cab flavors, you’d look at the color in the glass, look at the label on the bottle telling you “Cabernet Sauvignon” and be able to put two and two together. BUT if I just handed you the same glass of red wine, didn’t show you the bottle, and asked you to guess what it was, you might get flustered.
Blind tasting messes with your mind, which is part of what makes it fun.
That said, it’s also an important skill to master for aspiring wine professionals, which is why I try to do it whenever I can. The only problem is you can’t really blind taste by yourself.
Rewind back to that fateful Wednesday. I get the call and he asks if I want to blind taste some wine. Had you had a camera on me, this may or may not have been my reaction…
So he comes over and we end up going through some wine. I blinded him on a 2015 Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley in Oregon, and at the end of his tasting pulls out a 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon. I think I called it correctly, but when I saw who the producer was I couldn’t help but laugh.
The wine I blind tasted and the focus of our next blog is the 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon from JUSTIN in Paso Robles, CA.
so hot right now
Paso Robles is the cool new kid in the California wine world. It’s a relatively new AVA (American Viticultural Area), “Since the Paso Robles AVA was established in 1983, [it] has grown to encompass 200+ wineries and 40,000 vineyard acres.” By Comparison, Napa, the 800lb king kong gorilla in the US wine industry has a smaller footprint, but all the prestige from its 400+ wineries, with names like Screaming Eagle, Opus One, Stags’ Leap, and other wines you surely know and love.
There is no problem with Napa. Napa is still “that dude.” He’s the proverbial captain of the Football team and is dating the prettiest girl in the county. Napa still has a promising future ahead of him and is doing wonderfully cool things in the valley with exciting wines and projects. Sound cliche and that’s kind of the point I’m trying to make. You know what to expect with Napa.
You know Napa means big and boisterous cabernet sauvignon with grippy tannins, luscious ripe fruit, oak, oak, and more oak. Paso Robles, on the other hand, is the new kid who moved in from Denver and drives an eco-friendly Tesla. He doesn’t play football, but he plays lead guitar for an up-and-coming band that just sold out the 9:30 club, and also dates an insanely attractive person.
As a fellow wine devotee, Paso Robles is a wine region you should absolutely familiarize yourself with. It offers you really delicious California wines that are a different kind of awesome:
“Opulent, sweet-fruited red wines with a plush mid-palate, high alcohol levels, and a surprisingly firm backbone of acidity that will make you sit up straight in your seat. Paso Robles wines are typically enjoyed in their youth, although the best ones do stand the test of time.” - via Lindsay Pomeroy
what does it taste like?
A few things jumped out at me for this wine. First, it has a fantastically pleasing structure to it. It doesn’t have the extra grippy tannins that you might expect from a California cab sauv, but it doesn’t have paper hands either. The tannins are there, but they are very approachable. Everything about this wine felt harmonious.
Most notably, however, was the flavor profile. This wine is juicy. Like Cap'N Crunch Oops All Berries. It’s got all the fruit you’d ever want. Lovely ripe red/blue fruits that are almost candied. The blueberry isn’t a fresh tart blueberry, but more a blueberry push-pop.
That’s not to say that this is a sweet wine, it’s a dry wine for sure, nearly full-bodied, but the fruit in this wine is just awesome. I’m sure this will calm down as it gets older, and some of the quite secondary notes (tobacco, leather, floral, etc.) will shine a bit more, but right now this wine is here, and it’s ready to go.
This wine is an ultimate crowd-pleaser. If your wife is going over to a friend’s house for wine night, this is a perfect wine to chose. If you’re having cheese pizza because it’s a Friday night during lent, this is the perfect wine to have alongside. And if you’re going to head over to a friend’s house, on a random Wednesday during quarantine to blind taste wine, turns out this is the perfect choice to bring.
-Dustin