The Duel

I started off the year with a number of good resolutions. One of these was to write a little more about the wines I taste and I hope I stick to it. To start off with is this tasting that took place over the Christmas holidays together with my ‘usual’ wine-loving friends. It was a blind tasting ‘duel’ between four Italian wines and four French ones. We tasted the wines two at a time, compared them and then uncovered the labels. Nothing could be more simple and we had no idea what Claudio, for us ‘Maestro Claudio’, had in store for us.
Unfortunately, in the fourth pair of bottles we tasted one of contenders (an Apparits 1995 from Castello di Ama) was corked and so the Vieux Chateau Certan Pomerol 1995 won by forfeit. The tasting was supposed to have ended there but unknown to us Claudio, to ‘compensate’ for the corked bottle, had prepared four other wines (all Italian) as a grand finale and an alcoholic way to exchange holiday greetings. But here again one of the bottles was disqualified. It was a Sassicaia 1990 that had an aroma of bouillon that leaned towards marasca cherry, an excessive acidity and the finish was too short. And so the Orenellaia 1990 won uncontested.
The wines that follow are paired up the way they were tasted, the only exception being the fourth couple which were the winners by forfeit.

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