With apologies to whoever wrote that tedious book in the 90s, this event was not for anyone frivilously rich or fabulously overcompensated for being laid off. although it did draw some of both.And then, it did draw a large contingent of underemployed wine bloggers and erstwhile wine lovers.
The primary challenge of the Pinot Summit Tasting, is to select your top 3 wines: 3 out of 40!! Blind! Ha! That may sound easy to you, but even if you have already shaken hands with the majority of these wines, if you love color, if you love art, if you love pinot, this is your paramount.
Colors! Pinots! They went on and on. But thankfully, they were limited to 40 for this tasting. For crayon cravers like me, there are now 133 official Crayola colors up from 64 in 1958 when I first paid them heed. Some 21 have been retired along the way. I don’t know what they are.
Never embraced Green, Lilac or Dark Red out of the early 60s Crayola box, but the wines that wore these color bands were pretty darned amazing. Green was classic Pinot with all the aromas you’d expect in a Burgundy, and then a healthy dose of raspberry, coffee and brilliant acidity. The finish went on until next week.
Gunmetal got a lot of attention: it seemed over the top to me. Gray was woodsy, with currant and licorice and enough wood to ignite its own funeral pyre.
Hot Pink was sexy as a siren with lilacs and rhubarb, a hint of wintergreen and the palest color of all the wiines. This color assignation was no accident. I loved this wine.
If you can call it a “problem,” there were too many great wines to choose from. I’ve never seen so many people going back and back and back again to figure out what their faves were. I had a really hard time picking my top 3: usually, I can nail that within the first hour of tasting: but not this time.
Actually, I am still trying to figure that out.
Some of those wines are really haunting….
(magic decoding ring not included — results coming next!)
