Melbourne Offline / 21 October

[Ozzie W]

Date: Friday 21st October
Time: 6.30pm
Venue: Scopri (upstairs)
Theme: Everyone brings a red, relatively mainstream, reasonable quality and known. The list of wines is compiled and published prior and everyone provides their ranking of the wines pre-tasting. Wines then tasted double blind with the aim of giving an overall ranking and identifying if possible, then they are all revealed.

Attendees:
1. ChrisH
2. Benchmark
3. Benchmark+1
4. Diddy
5. Ozzie
6. Ozzie+1
7. mjs
8. Con J
9. Brodie

Reserves:
1. ?
2. ?

If you'd like to be a reserve, please let me know.

Wines so far:
1986 Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet - Ozzie+1
1990 Moss Wood Cabernet - Con J
1994 Best's Thomson Family Shiraz - ChrisH
1998 Bowen Estate Ampelon Shiraz - mjs
​1998 Penfolds Bin 389 - Ozzie
1998 Penfolds Bin 28 - Benchmark
2001 Penfolds Bin 389 - Benchmark+1
2007 Trinity Hill Homage Shiraz-Viognier - Brodie

[Ozzie W]

I'll bring a white to get us all started.

[Rory]

Reserve please Ozzie?

Rory

[mjs]

I will bring a fortified to finish

[Diddy]

Hi everyone, I should have my bottle sorted over the next few days - need to make sure I can find what I'm thinking of bringing!

[Ozzie W]

Date: Friday 21st October
Time: 6.30pm
Venue: Scopri (upstairs)
Theme: Everyone brings a red, relatively mainstream, reasonable quality and known. The list of wines is compiled and published prior and everyone provides their ranking of the wines pre-tasting. Wines then tasted double blind with the aim of giving an overall ranking and identifying if possible, then they are all revealed.

Attendees:
1. ChrisH
2. Benchmark
3. Benchmark+1
4. Diddy
5. Ozzie
6. Ozzie+1
7. mjs
8. Con J
9. Brodie

Reserves:
1. alexc92
2. ?

If you'd like to be a reserve, please let me know.

Wines so far:
1986 Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet - Ozzie+1
1990 Moss Wood Cabernet - Con J
1994 Best's Thomson Family Shiraz - ChrisH
1998 Bowen Estate Ampelon Shiraz - mjs
​1998 Penfolds Bin 389 - Ozzie
1998 Rockford Basket Press - Brodie
1999 Lakes Foley - Diddy
2001 Penfolds Bin 389 - Benchmark
2004 Cullen Diana Madeline - Benchmark+1

[Ozzie W]

Reserve please Ozzie?

Rory

Done.

[via collins]

Bugger! I'll be in Rome when this is on, otherwise would have nabbed a reserve spot.

It's looking very smart indeed, good corralling Oz!

[alexc92]

Missed the last few. Ill jump on the reserves!

Cheers

[Ozzie W]

Missed the last few. Ill jump on the reserves!

Cheers

Done

[mjs]

Ozzie, I might prepare some "scoring" sheets.

Line-up is looking good btw

[Polymer]

The list of wines is compiled and published prior and everyone provides their ranking of the wines pre-tasting. Wines then tasted double blind with the aim of giving an overall ranking and identifying if possible, then they are all revealed.

Sounds like a great night! Some great wine there..

I think you mean single blind though right? Since you know the list of wines ahead of time...

[mjs]

Double blind in as much as no-one will know which wine we are drinking at a given time, as opposed to the "owner" of a bottle knowing what it is and us knowing a region or variety. Yes, the list is a bit of a "hint sheet"

[Ozzie W]

Rory is out, so alexc92 is now first reserve.

[Ozzie W]

Brodie's wine has been changed to a '98 Basket Press.

[mjs]

Excellent, looks like there's a solid representation from '98.

Maybe it's turning into a '98 night haha

[Benchmark]

So what is the drill with this quadruple blind business?

We can usually pick who brings what.

My beautiful craft work with twine and crape paper.

Oz and Chris with their numbered socks.

Liam with his last minute foil.

It doesn't really matter what the King uses, he just makes the wine up as he goes.... haha.

How are we going to work this?

[Ozzie W]

However we do it, we need to hide the bottle shape. The Rockford and Bowen Estate bottles have a different shape to the rest.

[Chris H]

I'll email my suggestions.

[Benchmark]

No Chris.

We will discuss over the forum.

Back and forward until this thread is six pages long and we still don't know what is going on....

[Ozzie W]

Diddy's wine has been added to the list - 1999 Lakes Foley

[rlgriffo]

Benchmark+1? pfft

[Benchmark]

rlgriffo +1 perhaps?

[Ozzie W]

Oh no! We've been spammed.

[Ozzie W]

1998 Bin 28 removed and will be substituted with something else - watch this space!

[Ozzie W]

And the final wine in the line-up will be....... 2004 Cullen Diana Madeline

[Ozzie W]

The results are in. I have combined everyone's rankings and presented as a chart which shows both the overall group-think and also individual scores. There's certainly some interesting large variations in individual rankings for some of the wines.

The 1990 Moss Wood is the clear winner, followed next by the John Riddoch and Best's Thomson Family. Things a bit less clear after that. I'll leave you all to mull over the results. Should make for some interesting discussions tomorrow night.

[Benchmark]

Great stuff Oz.

When the market starts to shift there is only one way for the 2001 Bin 389 to go. Watch this space

Looking forward to tomorrow night.

[mjs]

Great stuff Ozzie. The 86 JR is interesting with only first, second, third last and last rankings, nothing in between! The tasting will tell

[Ozzie W]

Great stuff Ozzie. The 86 JR is interesting with only first, second, third last and last rankings, nothing in between! The tasting will tell

It certainly is interesting. 86 JR is a phenomenal wine when it's a good bottle and barely drinkable when it's not (which has happened all too often to me). My +1 purchased a few bottles at auction recently. A bottle two weeks ago was awesome. Another last week was terrible. It's like playing Russian roulette.

Those that ranked the JR lower are obviously playing the odds that it'll be a flawed bottle (including myself). I refuse to buy old JR as I've been burnt too many times (oxidation, not TCA). I'm convinced the corks that Wynns used are not very good quality.

You have a lot more experience with Wynns than I'll ever have. Maybe I've just been extremely unlucky? What's your experience been like with older JR's?