We decided to try something a little different with this one and do three varietal Cabernets and three Bordeaux style blends that were primarily Cabernet, including one from Saint-Julien in Bordeaux, France. The idea was to see how really different the blends might, or might not, taste from the varietal wine. It was a lot of fun to see if anyone could tell the difference, and in fact, the tasters who had a significantly higher exposure to blended wines got it right on the money. These were some heavy hitter wines, some famous and some more cultish in nature. We always try to pick wines we think are worth buying to do our tasting to make sure each region is fairly represented, but this time they were closer in quality than we had thought.

The tasting took more than our traditional hour because complexity of these wines and trying to discern location and wine type. These are six very good wines, all highly rated and recommended and all worth trying at least once. The styles are very different, and it is fairly easy to pick which is French, which is from the cooler California regions and which from the warmer; their terroir markers were that distinct. Everyone felt the French wine would benefit from more years in the bottle and the Gold Hill wine had reached a very aged mellowness. The Madrona Quintet was a favorite for its great complexity and blending, and the Sattui was considered just a well-made wine for sipping after dinner.

When we finished the tasting, as always is the case, we paired it to a dinner custom made for Cabernet; grilled steak and pork roast with oven fried potatoes, green beans cooked with olive oil, bacon and lots of good pepper, and a salad with a pecan and blue cheese dressing. Although the Bordeaux wine went best with the steak and was a match made in heaven, all of the wines worked very well. We also had a Madrona Vineyards Riesling open and it went unbelievably well with the pork, the fruitiness of the wine working extremely well with the apparent sweetness in pork. To read our findings, Click Here!