Throughout the course of Grape Madness, there have been charges lobbied from all directions at the blind tastings, some educated, others basically the rantings of the oenocologically challenged.
But one fact that cannot be overlooked whether you are Robert Parker or someone with the initials DG is that we each go into the evaluation of any wine with our preferences on our palate.
For me, over the years I’ve become more accustomed to, and enjoy more, those wines that exhibit strong upfront fruit, not a “bomb” per se but certainly not an austere, trust me this will be good in fifteen years kind of wine.
So heading into the Final Four this weekend, I felt I knew a lot about the wines I was tasting and like RJ in the Northern California brackets, I too went into my first final four matchup with a certain expectation of what was going to happen, even if I did not know what wine was in what bag.
(3)Talus Pinot Noir versus (3) Bodega Norton Malbec
Both of these wines deserved to be in the Final Four. Talus, a sure fire early exit pick of mine got through its part of the bracket against two more expensive challengers and showed its worth in a close but sure handed victory over the Rawson’s Retreat.
But like an aging fighter visited in the locker room by an Atlantic City mob boss and told, “Sorry kid, this ain’t your night.” the light and airiness of the Pinot, so pleasant in the Elite Eight, really did not stand a chance against a gamer challenger in the Norton.
From our first sips of each wine, Marc and I looked at each other and knew. Well I looked at him, I think he was writing down his estimated brix at harvest for each wine as part of his scoring system.
The Malbec was big and jammy on the nose, yes, but as I’ve said ad naseum before, big fruity nosed wines often disappoint on the palate, not living up to what you anticipate from having your olfactory glands massaged by some big, brassy broad. What impressed about the Argentine was its structure, that balance all the way through that to me is the hallmark of great wine, at any price point.
The Talus hung as close as possible but found themselves down by 16 at the half, 55-39.
The second half was more of the same, each time the Pinot got close with some mild and enjoyable fruit, I’d take a sip of what I had surely indentified as the Malbec, and heard Patti Lupone singing in my ear.
The game was never really as close as the final score:
Bodega Norton 84, Talus 74
So the plucky wine from South America has made it all the way to the big dance on Monday. And earned its trip every step of the way.
Yes, I’ve been remiss in posting but with good reason. Call it civic duty, call it following in the footsteps of the Founding Father’s, call it sitting around for eight hours switiching buildings, from jury assembly to courtroom having to pass through metal detectors each time.
I’ll admit from the outset that I’m somewhat of a technophobe. It took me awhile to get a cellphone that had e-mail capabilities, I fumble around with Excel like Garo Yepremeian in the ’73 Super Bowl and need my eight year old son to help me set up a password on my computer.
