Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Vino Schmeeno

Sacrebleu! Great news recently that a kiwi pinot noir was crowned best in the world!
But don't expect to get your mitts on a bottle - even its makers are struggling to track it down.
Martinborough Vineyard's 1998 Reserve has topped the world's finest wines in California. Burgundys dominated the competition, taking three of the top five spots, but even the most prestigious - a $7000 bottle of 1990 Domaine de la Romanee-Conti La Tache - was trumped by this $200 Martinborough wine.
Just 300 cases of the '98 Reserve were ever made: Martinborough Vineyard has only 10 bottles remaining in its cellar, and is now trying to buy it back for $500 a bottle to replenish its stock.
The long, dry, summer of 1998 was regarded as one of the very best periods for pinot noir grapes in Martinborough.
Mind you, if you never get to taste this earthshattering winner (and let's face it, that's the probable scenario facing most of us!), take comfort in settling in for the evening with a $10 supermarket loss leader. It's been proven that most wine snobs are not able to tell the difference!
Psychologists have found that drinkers in a blind taste testing could only tell the difference between $6 wine and $50 wine about half the time. Specifically, 53% of the time for whites and 47% for reds...that's about the some percentage had they simply guessed.
So break out the cheapo vino and bottoms up!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love that Martinborough Vineyard's 1998 Reserve won such an amazing top spot. Good on ya Martinborough Vineyard!

Liz said...

Excellent news that's for sure.