ROC 7

Jaimie and Carrie hosted ROC 7 Sat. Nov. 25, 2006 at their newly renovated leaky condo apartment. We are into the second week of a boil water advisory and at the beginning of a rare November snow dump. Strange times. We had the good fortune of hosting a new sommelier tonight: Leo - Jen and Anthony's bouncing baby boy. Welcome to the world of amateur wine drinking.

The theme tonight was “King of the Castle”. The Cedar Creek Merlot that won ROC 6 went up against 4 challengers, one from each couple. The challengers were: Coudoulet du Beaucastel Cotes-du-Rhone 2003, Kettle Valley Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2004, Pirramimma McLaren Vale Shiraz 2002, and St. Henri Penfolds Shiraz 2002. The winning wine was Pirramimma, brought by the hosts, Carrie and Jaimie, although the St. Henri Shiraz brought by Lisa and Brad was great as well at almost a statistical tie: 8.04 vs. 7.90. The prize-winning Merlot came a distant 4^th at 7.23 points on our proprietary 10 point scale; it seems perhaps that the 2003 vintage is not as strong as the 2002 version that won last time. The laggard of the evening was the Cotes-du-Rhone brought by Anne and Roberto (5.96 points), elegantly and perhaps ironically described by Anne as having a bouquet of “stinky feet” during the first round of tasting. Jen and Anthony were the champions of varietal guessing, both getting 3 out of 5 correct.

We ended the evening by drinking dessert wines and port. Anne and Roberto shone here by bringing Elephant Island framboise and chocolate ice cream. It ended up fairly early for these sorts of things, perhaps the natural calming presence of a baby or the interminable weather. I for one blame turbidity – surely Vancouver’s 2006 word of the year.

To sum up the evening, it seems that the group really likes Shiraz from Australia.