Earlier last week, I joined a collection of wine bloggers, wine bar owners, wine buyers, sister wine writers and brother wine lovers, in tasting 64 pinots previously hand-selected via a series of careful blind evaluations from a pool of 230 entries.
Gathered for the 8th annual Pinot Shootout finals, brainchild of Barbara Drady, who runs Affairs of the Vine. this is as serious a bunch of Pinotphiles as you are likely to find gathered on Fishermans’ Wharf in San Francisco on a January Monday afternoon, watching the tourists come and go like flocks of pigeons. Panhandlers share the streets with musicians far more talented than their shabby, litter-strewn stage belies. On the waterfront, dreams are lived out loud. Where wharf meets water, there is a harsh reality, which Marlon Brando articulated so well: “I coulda been a contender!!” Each winemaker entering a competition like this dreads speaking those lines. Perhaps they will reach the finals, an honor accorded to fewer than 20% of the overall entries. Hope springs as eternal as dappled sunlight on grey, luminous Alcatraz, lurking in the background.
http://www.thecalifornian.com/article/20100115/LIFESTYLE/1150305/-1/NEWS17
