Vintage Wine Tasters Announce Results of Sauvignon Blanc Tasting

To recap, the Vintage Wine Tasters, a group of non-industry people who love and enjoy wine, have been meeting informally for many years to taste and judge wine. At our previous meeting in June, we decided it was time to go public with our wine judging expertise. We posted the ratings for six Zinfandel wines we evaluated that day in June on this blog.

Little did we know what would happen next. Within minutes of the blog post, the social media sites sent out a wave of comments and tweets that reverberated throughout the online wine world. Within days we were inundated with tempting offers to be sent samples of wine. Talking notes appeared on wine shelves: “Vintage Wine Tasters Select Sobon Rocky Top as Best Zin.”We were astonished but quite pleased that the wine world was looking for a new voice in wine ratings. About those wine samples! We have agreed, unlike many wine critics, to refuse all samples of wine and vow not to be swayed by any winery, wine shop, or distributor.

On this past Wednesday, we met again to evaluate six Sauvignon Blanc wines from around the world. Each member of the Vintage Wine Club ranked the wines using an innovative 25-point scale obtained free from the WCG Website. Then the individual place rankings were tallied to determine the favorite wine of the group.

The results:

1st Place:
Santa Rita 2007 Floresta, Chile – $10 at K&L Wines, normally sells for around $20

2nd Place:
Kim Crawford 2008, New Zealand – $ 13 to $14 at Costco, TJ’s

3rd Place:
Montes Leyda Vineyard 2008 – Chile – $10 at Costco

4th Place:
Bancroft Reserve 2008, New Zealand – $15 at the WineStop

5th Place:
Pouilly Fume 2008, Loire Valley – $9.99 at TJ’s

Sixth Place:
Kenwood Sonoma 2007 – $8 at Costco and other stores

We were quite surprised how much the top four wines tasted very much alike. We agreed the one thing that set Floresta apart was the long-lasting finish that the other wines did not have. Although the Kenwood was in 6th place, we consider it to be a very nice wine and at $8 is a terrific wine bargain.

Two months from now, we take on Pinot Noir. We decided for this tasting the host would bargain hunt for Pinot and use a price point of $25 as tops. If you have suggestions, comments, or whatever, feel free to post them below. But please, do not send any samples. Oh Well, maybe just a few.