In April I was fortunate enough to have been invited to a unique wine judging event held at Fabbioli Cellars. This was a judging of 2010 Cabernet Francs from across Virginia.
2010 was one of the best Virginia vintages in recent memory, even surpassing 2007. Given the prominence that Cabernet Franc plays within Virginia Wine, and that we were tasting 2010 vintage I was sure it was going to be a great event.
And it was, it was also a very interesting way to do a wine judging.
The judging was done bracket-style and was a mix of bloggers, professionals and lay people.
Our host, Jimmy, has a detailed write up here, here, here, and here.
The way it worked was that they broke us down into four groups, each group blind tasted a different set of wines, the winner from each of the groups advanced to the next round.
This means that not everyone tastes all of the wines, until it gets down to the final groups. I think this method helps remove some of the bias that can be inherent in a judging. For example, every one knows I am big an of Doug's Cabernet Franc, and it is one of the wines I can recognize blind - even amongst other Virginia Cabernet Francs. Since I wasn't in the group that initially tasted the 2010 Fabbioli Cabernet Franc my bias couldn't (subconsciously) inflate the score.
Each wine was judged on several different characteristics and the wines with the highest scores advanced to the next round.
In the end, the winner was the 2010 Jefferson Vineyards. You can see the progression in the chart above, provided by Chris at Beltway Bacchus.
Congratulations to Andy, at Jefferson Vineyards, and to the staff at Fabbioli Cellars for putting together a great judging and I look forward to future judgings like this.
3 comments:
Hey Allan - Great post, but I have to say I disagree with the thought that 2010 was better then 2007.
The 2010 vintage was an easy year to make wine and the wines are opulent, rich and exciting, but they lack the finesse that shows a lot of the terroirs around Virginia in my opinion. I actually prefer 2008's and the whites from 2009 to 2010 for expressing our sites. The 2010's are hedonistic and delicious, but just don't show our potential style. I also think winemaking got in the way of a lot of 2010's through watering back and picking too early due to sugars getting high resulting in some diluted (in the winery) and green wines from picking before the grapes were physiologically ripe.
That is just my thought though. I do like what 2010 wines had the potential of, but I just don't think they are Virginian.
Jordan,
I have heard similar thoughts from other Virginia winemakers and there is a strong argument to be made that 2007 is more reflective of Virginia's terroir than 2010.
I would love to organize a 2007/2010 vertical of either Cab Franc or Petit Verdot, but I am afraid very few winemakers have any 2007s left.
Maybe I will post something to twitter and see if I can get any traction.
I know we would be happy to give you some wine from 07 through 10 with most wines, but we don't make a Petit Verdot.
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