"Adulterers" Wine Tasting

For an account of my second Wijnsociëteit tasting, that I dubbed "Adulterers" because the subject was wines made from grapes from outside their "natural" habitat, see http://home.hetnet.nl/~peternelly/.

Favorites were the Dialog Cuvee, a wooded chardonnay, unwooded sauvignon blanc blend from Johannishof Reinisch, Thermenregion, Austria, and the York Creek Petite Sirah 1996 from Ridge. The most expensive wine of the night, the 1998 Syrah from Isole & Olena, seemed to miss some fruit but this (in my opinion over-) developed mushroomy aromas had disappeared a while later. Might have had something to do with the cheese we were having at that time, though.

Wine Games

In April, four students of the school I teach at, the International Hotel Management School in Breda, will organize a Wine Options Game. Teams of three will compete in correctly identifying and answering questions about the wines served - blind, of course.

Interested or want to participate? See http://winegame.chidero.nl

On Sunday 23rd I will take part in a wine competition myself, the Grand Prix St. Hubert. The GPStH is Holland's most renowned wine challenge. Tasting 10 red wines blind, teams will have to match those with the possible 'appellations' provided, and come up with as many assumptions of other details (grape varieties, vintage year, producer etc.) as possible. I am teamed up with two members of the WijnGilde Noord-Brabant. Even though one of us used to enter wine competitions quite regularly in the past, we have no real ambtions other than having a good time. Monday is the first of our scheduled training sessions; we will each bring three wines covered in foil and the (educated?!) guessing will start ...