We arrive to see 5 tables laden with 38 glasses each, 37 with a good dose of the least c-through group of wines you will ever see, one for water.
The tasters were Ric, Campbell Mattinson, Andrew Sutherland-Smith, Andrew's friends John and Gail and me (with a little help from Andrea). It wasn't truly a double-blind tasting as you could bet there would be about 6 Warrabilla's in the group, plus Durif from many of the local wineries as well as some further afield. Ric and I tried a few Durifs on Friday and Saturday morning in preparation, but I certainly didn't definitvely recognise any of them in the blind tasting. I did pick a few Warrabilla's though.
Over about 2 hours or so we worked our way through the 37 wines, occasionaly resting for a snack of cold meats and cheese, bread and dry biscuits and lots of water, a couple of bottles were found to have cork taint and backups opened, one of the backups was tainted more severely than the original bottle
I'm not going to try to steal any more of the thunder of Ric and Campbell, the full stories, with pictures will appear from them in a month or so probably in Winefront and on torbwine, but here is a link to the list of wines in my ranked order. (I scored out of 20 in .5 increments and converted roughly to 100 points via the Jeremy Oliver concordance.)
Durif Tasting at Warrabilla
Many thanks to Andrew and Carol for their hospitality and a wonderful chance to try these wines. The quality of the warrabilla Durifs is evident from the results, the other Warrabilla reds are excellent as well, do yourself a favour and try the all-red version of the tasting pack with 6 2004 Reserve/Parola's reds, superb value. www.warrabillawines.com.au
