Nearly eighty Local Singapore Noses showed up to take the April Fools Black Glass Challenge at the Picotin. The blind pourers led the blind tasters that night!
Just as planned, everyone was a little bit fooled and discovered that without looks a glass of wine can truly be deceiving.
Eight wines were all dressed up in TLN red-bags to keep the labels hidden, e.g. blind; in fact, they were double-blind since even the pourers could not tell what they were pouring into the opaque black glasses.
As for the wine enthusiast guests they were equipped with a black glass in one hand, and game card in the other. The rules were simple: First, guess the colour – is the wine white, rosé or red? Then take a guess at either the grape variety or the wine’s country of origin. For tie-breaking extra marks the game card had a handful of general wine trivia questions.
To add a humbling degree of difficulty, all wines were served chilled so that temperature wouldn’t be a clue. For the reds, this meant that the bouquets were slightly more subdued than the whites – but the nose is only one of the senses for evaluation. Throughout the evening guests bantered back and forth about whether a wine was a white, red or rosé. Since the “nose” could be so deceiving most people tried to assess the mouth-feel and tannin structure of the wine for clues – though many were still scratching their heads!
Once everyone tasted through all 8 wines the TLN emcee Monsieur “Le Walt” dressed in a spectacular, cross-culturally sensitive costume of Asian batik with a French beret announced, “Out of a total mark of 24 there is a big cluster around six Local Noses...and the winner is?”
The clear first prize winner was Marcus Lai who scored 19 out of 24 points. He was the only person to guess correctly that there is a tempranillo amongst the wines. “No, I am not a guru,” the long-term TLN supporter humbly claimed, and then admitted, “just an enthusiast.” Yeah...right! Masquerading as a dietician during the day, he sure knows how to let his hair down and palate loose at night! For his efforts he won a Picotin dinner voucher.
Coming in a very close second with 17 points was Alex Koh, who won a delicious bottle of Champagne Mandois Millesimé. The most gripping moment was the four-way tie breaker at 15 points. Local Nose Rebecca Lawrence took over the microphone to test the remaining 4 Noses in a “lightening round” of wine quiz questions. Not a millisecond after the quizmaster finished asking which celebrated wine reviewer was coming to Singapore Damian Tan, blurted out “Robert Parker!” scoring him a very cool Nuvo Vino infrared wine thermometer. (See winners in photo left)
Although TLN didn’t give awards for originality the clear winner would have been for the ‘country of origin’ answer that jokingly answered that wine number three came from Brunei! That perhaps captured the overall cheerful tone of the evening – even an unannounced April's Fool joke played by Picotin's power generator added a chuckle to the evening. “When you said it's a black glass blind tasting, you sure weren’t kidding,” quipped a stranger in the dark.
As always, Picotin put on a festive spread of white-onion-and-rocket pizzas, duck liver paté on walnut toast, terrine au porc topped with a wee dollop of moutard à l'ancienne, vegetable quiche, salmon blinis, and all finished with profiteroles and lemon jelly slices. Plenty of pairing opportunities for the wines – even if tasters violated clichéd old rules like “white wine doesn’t go with red meat!” Now comes the unveiling of the bottles we poured...drumroll please...
First up was the 2007 Sancerre Chavignol Rosé, which more than half thought was a white and few thought was a red. Then came a white grenache 2007 Château Fontvert, from Côtes du Lubéron in southeastern Rhône valley, that yeilded a similar mixed decision.
The third wine was 2007 Château de Coulain Chinon, a herbaceous Loire Cab Franc with soft tannins and hints of minerality, and boy, did a whole lot of peope think it was a white wine.
Next was the dry-finished grenache blend from Valencia, 2008 Rosa Rosae. What?! Serve a rosé, after a red? Can, lah! After all most everyone though that the third wine was white!
Undressed next was the 2006 Don Domenico Tempranillo from San Juan, Argentina. “The earthiness made me suspect that there might be tempranillo in it,” explained winner Marcus Lai. Well done, mate. He sniffed out the first prize with impressive accuracy!
The flight then returned to the old world with a Maison Joulie Côtes de Nuit Burgundy, a light red wine that by this stage was difficult to define. Then to really throw a loop TLN served another white; a 2007 Sancerre Chavignol and followed it up with the lucky last 2006 Domaine André Brunel Côtes du Rhône, a velvety Grenache blend with ripe fruit and juicy acidity – plus a little easier to pick out that it was red.
All in the black-glass tasting clearly illustrated that everybody loves surprises. “It was interesting, that we could not see anything,” said runner-up Alex Koh. “We had to gauge the tannin level to guess whether it was red,” he added, “otherwise we really could not tell the difference between white and red.”
So everybody played the fool, and loved it!
Contributed by Lucia SantosoLucia is TLN's Database Manager and an aspiring wine writer!
