Double-blind. Very advanced colour -- to the point I was joking about white Burgundian premox. I called this immediately as chardonnay, thanks to the crisp minerality and lemony acidity, but this did come out rounder and fuller than it should have been. Riper, with a little waxiness to it. I thought this was ten years older than it was though...

Served double-blind. Again, I immediately called this as a chardonnay, and again, due to the racy acids and crisp minerality. I did say this was released within the last two years. The palate and nose both show a little bit of a honeyed floral quality that I should have picked up. There's some very nice white fruit here too; a pretty zesty wine, better suited for the summer than a Chicagoan winter.

Served double-blind. High-toned, sweet, and honeyed on the nose. Definitely a bit heady. I joked that this couldn't be white Rhone because I actually kind of liked it. Well, lo and behold. It is certainly a fuller wine, with a huge body. The fruit and ripeness is quite prominent here, but there's actually enough acidity to perk this up. Quite surprising, really. Perhaps that old adage where white Rhone is only good with lots and lots of age is actually true...?

Served double-blind. It was pretty easy to narrow this down to high-end white Burgundy, made in a reductive style very quickly. This didn't have the fat oak that Boillot had, so I was thinking PYCM or Roulot. Very good acidity here, and this doesn't show particularly ripe, and I thought I picked up a bit of greenness to it, which had me thinking 2011. A very impressive Corton-Charlemagne -- it has been years since I last had a Girardin wine (and I remember them being the butt of more than one joke before). It's clearly time to re-evaluate.

Served double-blind. A tinge of orange is the first sign this is a sweeter wine, and indeed it is. This tastes a bit like Sauternes without all the heat, and there's a somewhat funky cantaloupe flavour on the palate. All that, along with the colour and the state of the secondary characteristics got me thinking mid-1990s sweet chenin... which clearly means that the 1997 Huet Constance that I had a few days ago was probably flawed in some way or other.

Served double-blind. Well, this one was pretty embarrassing. Loire sauvignon blanc, I said. Hell, I even thought I picked up a little bit of oak on this. It certainly was grassy, and there was plenty of aniseed and licorice on the nose. Very taut acidity, this didn't have a massive stature, but was lean and focused. Clearly from the last year or two, given its freshness too.

Served double-blind. The tannins here were the story of the day. They're aggressive to the point I just blurted out young nebbiolo. But the fruit wasn't as ripe and big, so I could have believed this was some sort of young Valtellina. The fruit here is definitely red-tinted, and there's great structure to this wine as well. The palate presence is quite thick too -- this is a wine to which I ought to pay some attention.

Served double-blind. Probably partially carbonic and super light, with that weird not-quite-fully-fermented smell. This is one of those (what I like to call) post-modern wines. Lots and lots of stems, this is light with unripe tannins that are quite abrasive. Very thin. I managed to call this as young pinot noir, but that's as far as I got.

Served double-blind. Again a wine in the post-modernist style, with the partial carbonic ferment and barely any extraction. The nose here is really pretty, with lovely red fruit and florals, and the palate is fuller and more rounded than the 2014 Enderle und Moll. This still shows a bit of underripe stems of which I'm not particularly fond.

Served double-blind. If people have been tasting 2005s and having the same experience I did with this bottle, it's no wonder they've decided to get rid of them. This was a wine that was immensely tough to read. I had no good guess as to what this was at all. It was shut down and shut down hard. There was a little bit of dirt, but mostly the story was one of very, very hard tannin.

Served double-blind. Very ripe and sappy, with some clear residual sugar on the palate. Lots of ripe plum and prune flavours here, almost to the point of being just a little bit stewed. There was a bit of age on this, which actually gave it some more complexity. I ended up guessing 1998 CdP; I was very surprised to learn that this wine came from a relatively leaner year, as this tasted very ripe and full-bodied to my palate.

Served double-blind. I had barely had a chance to stick my nose into the glass before Phil called LRA on this. And boy, is it true to form. Coconut, vanilla, and dill. For days. But this is a very good example, with ample fruit and acid, and good balance, so long as you can tolerate the American oak. This is still quite fresh, and despite its youth, the tannins aren't too ornery.

Served double-blind. Easily identified as old-school Napa, from the sweet fruit on the palate, as well as the clear green pepper nose. There's a touch of green herb (like mint or eucalyptus or some such) that was also a clear giveaway. I did think this was from the mid-90s though. Simply a very classic Napa cabernet showing very, very well for its age.

Served double-blind. Inky and big, but not particularly over-the-top. I thought that the fruit would have been very ripe and extracted based on the colour, but it certainly wasn't. There's a fair bit of acidity here too. I was all over the place on guessing this wine -- it's hard to pick out Rioja without that telltale American oak signature. That said, the oak use here, while not traditional for Rioja, is quite judicious. Good, but just not the sort of wine I'd ever pull on my own.

Believe it or not, I actually had a bottle of Chianti. I thought that this was actually showing quite well. It had a nice mix of green herbs and earth, with barely enough fruit to keep things in balance. The palate is obviously a bit abrasive and young, but there was some good material here -- I especially liked the dustiness on the finish.

When first opened, I thought that this was a very disappointing and poor wine. But with air, this really filled out and grew into a proper cabernet. There was just a hint of bell pepper on the back end of the nose that is very enticing, and the palate showed its black fruit in very nice balance with some green pepper. This definitely feels a lot cooler than many modern American cabernets, and I take that as a good thing.