Masters Tasting Group 7/10/10

I'm very fortunate to be allowed to attend the Master Sommelier Candidate Tasting Group in Los Angeles. It sounds a lot more formal than it is. Basically, at 10am every Friday, we bunch of drunkards all show up at Cut to taste wines blind. Well, maybe that makes it a little less smart than it is...

Essentially, for the Advanced and Master's exams, you are poured six wines (3 white and 3 red) to taste blind and analyze completely. You have 25 minutes. There are points awarded for certain characteristics of certain wines so you pretty much have to talk about everything. Oh - AND come to the correct conclusion of what grape thes wines are, where they are from precisely and what year it was made. Easy, right? We are basically practicing this format every week.

So, the cast of players in our little band of merry men (and woman):
Keith Goldston, Master Sommelier and Tutor of the group
Chris Miller, Wine Director of Spago
Dana Farner, Wine Director of Cut
Paul Sherman, Wine Instructor at Cordon Bleu Culinary School and Valentino's Server
Anthony Anselmi, Restaurant and Retail Sales for Kermit Lynch Importer
Jared Heber, Key Accounts Manager for Regal Wine Co. (formerly the Wine Director of Mozza and Gordon Ramsey at the London)
Mark Hefter, Wine Director of The Montage, Beverly Hills
Rob Harpest (me), Wine Director of Jar

This week, Keith poured us four whites and four reds since only four of us were in attendance. This way, we each got two wines to do aloud. The wines were:

Hermitage Blanc
Macon-Fuisse 2007
Central Coast Viognier
New Zealand Gewurtztraminer
Argentina Malbec
Chianti Classico Reserva 2005
Central Coast Syrah 2006
Barossa Australian Shiraz 2005

Overall, we did fairly well. Paul nailed the most, if I remember correctly due to his call of New World Gewurtztraminer. The two I did aloud seemed to be the most elusive. None of us called Malbec for Wine 4, and most of us called Barolo/Barbaresco for the Chianti. At least we were in the right country...

I personally felt pretty good about nailing most of the grapes. I was off on location and year a few times. I'm only heading in for the Advanced Certification. I'm pretty confident my performance would have been a pass with an accurate assessment of the characteristics of the wines.

This was more of an introduction to our format. Future posts on this topic will be more detailed. I will include our triumphs and defeats in the constant pursuit of figuring out what is in the glass. Hope you enjoy!!!