Last I checked the Grape Madness Scoreboard I was sitting pretty in third place, one of only five people whose pick to win it all still remained. Yet it is with great humility that I acknowledge that this success did not come as a result of the BevMo bracket. In fact, the two wines that made it out were my anticipated losers, showing once and for all that you have to be lucky sometimes too.
(3) 2007 Talus Pinot Noir versus (3) 2007 Penfolds Rawsons Retreat
For some reason I’ve always thought of Talus as a so-so brand, probably because it’s the kind of thing my wife will bring home when she heads to Ralph’s after work. You know, the type of bottle that’s usually found on the close out table alongside a marked down jar of spicy pickles or those fried crunchy onions that only sell during the Thanksgiving season.
I may have been totally wrong about this assessment but my mind has a way of saying, “There’s no way The Devil Wears Prada is going to be a good film.” But then I see it and really like it.
As for the Rawson’s Retreat, I bagged on Marc prior to the tourney, calling it the poor step-cousin of Penfold’s other Cab/Shiraz offering, the Koonunga Hill, which I’ve always liked.
So when both of these wines came out on top during his first and second round tastings, the taste on my palate was crow (it’s just like chicken!).
This next round of competition was tough, as we now had to match our own subjective likes and dislikes against one another . Marc, in his usual MIT scientist meets The Galloping Gourmet way had a pre-printed, seemingly thousand point scoring chart, covering everything from brix level to region, from varietal to ph.
I had a white sheet of paper pulled from my printer.
Still the games are played in the glass and both wines showed well, with noticeable fruit on the nose, red for the Aussie, black for the Pinot. And both showed nice subdued balance throughout, though the Talus was a bit tannic, which for me kept the RR on top at the half.
Each of us tried the wines several times, going back and forth between the glasses and I was pretty sure we were both going to pick different wines. And of course we did. But in the end after letting the wines open up even further, someone has to move on and someone has to go home.
After scoring them both, the loser has a much longer flight, that they should travel with heads held high, back to the land down under.
Talus 74, Penfold’s 71 (again, these are basketball type scores, not wine ratings)
Stay tuned for Sunday’s matchup between The Show from Californ-ia and pesky small forward from Argentina, Bodega Norton.
