Blind Wine Tasting Notes: Barbera

Last night at the San Carlos home of my friend Brad Brooke, our monthly group enjoyed a comparative blind tasting of seven wines made from the Barbera grape. Just like last month’s Cabernet Franc tasting, this tasting reflected an astounding aspect: though there’s not a lot of pure-varietal Barbera available in the local marketplace (despite the reported fact that Barbera is the fifth-most widely-planted grape in California), we again managed to not duplicate any labels. What an intrepid and resourceful group of wine shoppers we have in our circle!

Of our seven wines, 3 were from Northern California, and 4 were from Italy’s celebrated Piedmont region. The consensus of the group was that we like the Barbera produced from both geographies. There was no clear favorite, but rather 3 wines that rated significantly higher than the others.

Each of the wines listed below are ranked top-down, most favorite to least favorite; each is followed by the wine’s heat, or alcohol content. My purchase was the Sunset, which has been awarded 3 gold medals, one of which was the Best of California Gold Medal at the 2002 California State Fair. Funny that the group liked it more than I did – but not too much more!

Group Ranking
1998 Torti Incanto, Lombardy 13.5
2002 Sunset, Napa Valley 14.9
2003 Preston, Dry Creek Valley 14.5
2003 Seghesio, Sonoma County 14.6
2002 La Spinetta Ca di Pian d’Asti 13.5
2001 Cascina Castle T d’Asti 14.5
2002 Ruggeri Corsini Armujan d’Alba 14

Winehiker’s Ranking
2002 La Spinetta Ca di Pian d’Asti 13.5
2003 Preston, Dry Creek Valley 14.5
2002 Sunset, Napa Valley 14.9
1998 Torti Incanto, Lombardy 13.5
2001 Cascina Castle T d’Asti 14.5
2002 Ruggeri Corsini Armujan d’Alba 14
2003 Seghesio, Sonoma County 14.6

Next month, in tribute to the Olympics being held in Torino, Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, we’ll continue with the Italian theme, choosing Sangiovese as our grape. I’d like to wish a special viaggio buono to fellow wine-taster Dave Medlicott, who is about to jet off to Torino. Dave is a troubleshooter in video production technologies, and will be working non-stop during the Olympic telecast. I expect Dave will also get in some great skiing and wine tasting, especially if his girlfriend Debbie has anything to say about it. I believe we sent them off in good fashion last night.

~winehiker

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 21st, 2006 at 2:15 pm and is filed under group tasting notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.