Napa Valley: Winemakers Blind Taste Each Other's Trials

(Wines&Vines) - Rarely do winemakers get the opportunity to blind taste other winemakers’ experiments with wine quality, particularly examining the effects of various winemaking techniques in a controlled, peer-reviewed environment.

A recent event called The Winemakers Tasting helped fill that vacuum for members of the Napa Valley Vintners. About 60 winemakers came to The Culinary Institute of America, Greystone, to blind-taste 21 trials involving harvest methods, yeast selection, fermentor type, extended maceration, oak types, closures and more.

The results were dramatic in some cases. The winemakers’ votes favored machine-picked Cabernet Sauvignon over hand-picked by a 3:2 ratio in one trial. And they preferred hand sorting almost 4:1 over optical sorting for the same Cabernet grapes when they were all hand picked.

In a trial of barrel-fermented Cabernet with six different extended maceration times from 15 to 135 days, the sample with the shortest time got the most votes as No. 1, and the sample with the longest maceration got the lowest marks. Full results of all the trials were sent to participants. 

Kristin Belair of Honig Vineyard & Winery is one of six winemakers on the advisory board for The Winemakers Tasting. “We know these wineries are keen on camaraderie,” she said. “We decided that if sharing the wines from various trials we’ve done could help us make better wine, we would do it.” The other board members are Sara Fowler, Peju Winery; Kimberlee Nicholls, Markham Vineyards; Ted Henry, Jarvis; Joe Shirley, Trinchero Family Estates; and Jeffrey Stambor, Beaulieu Vineyard.