The Return of the Grand Crew

Eight years in the making.
Five Wines from Five Years for Five People.
Three Primary Grapes; Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre.
One Wine Maker.
One Style of Wine.
One Good Night.
It was the Return of the Grand Crew!














and the
V T
E A
R S
T T
I I
C N
A G
L !

OK with the dramatic stuff over, a blind tasting was at hand where the vintage of each wine was to be determined.
The Vintages were; 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2003.

The wine was E. Guigal's Cotes du Rhone















I found the profile of each wine essentially the same well balanced, medium bodied with cherry, blackberry and slight spice. Although each one had a little something different, earthyness in the 1998, dustyness in 1999, pronounced cedar in the 2000, Licorice in the 2001 and herbs in the 2003. Suprisingly the newer vintages were not anymore jammy than the older ones. It was difficult to choose which ones were the older vintages and which ones were the newer vintages. The drinking window on these wines is around five years so I thought the 1998 and the 1999 would show thier age but they didn't and you can see by the results below that the most vintages guessed were 2.

Actual Order	Zep Queen	Composer	Bacon	Dude	Mistress Puffy
1998	2001	2000	2001	1998	Phooa
1999	2000	1998	1999	2000	99 or 00
2001	1998	1999	2000	2003	MothraFuckra
2003	1999	2001	2003	2001	2003
2000	2003	2003	1998	1998	98 or 03

As you can see only The Dude got the 1998.
Captain Bacon & Mistrees puffy got the 1999.
No one got the 2000 or the 2001.
Captain Bacon & Mistress Puffy got the 2003.
So all of us combined couldn't get them correct.

What I think this means is that the wine maker knows how to make consistant and tasty wines.