Blind tasting (5 bottles in $10 - $500 range)
The Sumoba compound
Tasted March 17, 2024 by WineBurrowingWombat with 137 views
Introduction
From the twisted mind of bsumoba is a blind tasting of 5 bottles, with one bottle from each of the following price ranges:
$10 - $25
$50 - $100
$101 - $200
$201 - $300
$301 - $500
Grab some popcorn, because this could be a shocker..
Flight 1 - Prepping and waking up the palate. (1 note)
A light, but refreshing, starter before the games.
Palate: Dry fruits with just a touch of ripeness, clean minerals with a light bitterness. So clean, refreshing and crisp.
This is showing much better today than what I tasted 5-6 months ago, which was quite flat and flabby. This has an excitement to it, like a breath of fresh air.
Flight 2 - Let the blinds begin! (5 notes)
The order of this flight is exactly how everyone tasted during the blind.
Palate: Gentle red fruits, some heat or softly spiced wet oak, damp top soil, and gentle bitter stones on the finish. The pure gummy note (neon berries) also is reflected on the palate with little time.
[Blind tasting info in story]
Palate: Silvery minerals and graphite, tannin like steeped tea dive into the finish, with dark unripe fruits with a slight bitterness making its presence known throughout the palate. Bell peppers are also reflected here on the palate, but it goes away with around 6 hours of air. The fruits slowly got darker as well with more time, but at a snails pace.
[Blind tasting info in story]
Palate: Lifted dark fruits with a nice freshness on the mid palate, just like the fruits on the nose. Gentle spice develops on the palate. Cranberries and minerals on the finish. Juicy on the finish.
[Blind tasting info in story]
Palate: A bit austere initially with strict red fruit, it’s there but seems a little uptight. A lean strike of graphite throughout, with drying tannin and nicely steeped tea on the finish. With some air, everything drastically loosens up, bringing a familiar hug of welcoming balanced fruits, minerals and tannin.
[Blind tasting info in story]
Palate: Medium dark fruits (as in dark fruits with still some brightness), subtle earth, savory minerals and steeped tea on the finish. A nice juiciness to on the finish that brings everything together. A well rounded wine.
[Blind tasting info in story]
Closing
The three of us ranked each glass from least to most favorite, then the rankings were tallied and averaged out to see which glass ranked where, followed by bottle reveals. Results are as follows:
#1 2019 BV GdL Private Reserve (son of a..)
#2 2019 Bella Oaks
#3 2021 Aperture Cabernet Sauvignon Soil Specific
#4 2019 Colgin Cariad (wowww)
#5 2019 Hill Family Estate "The Barrel Blend"
What's crazy is how on pop and pour, everything was quite similar. Amazing how it was initially a bit hard to tell which is which when we're just basing off the aromas, making us think that some of the lower priced wines really hanged with the higher priced ones. However, with that said, the wines' conditions and its surroundings started to slowly change as the evening went on, with each wine revealing its own little subtleties (thank goodness because all the wines started off seeming like those awfully familiar yet liminal spaces).
The obvious surprise here is the Colgin but we all agreed that it just needed much more time, since it didn't seem to track with our previous experiences with Colgin (probably an off day or something).
A great time and humbling experience as always. Shoutout to bsumoba for hosting and humiliting, I mean gracing us, with this awesome experience ;) Until next time, folks!