In our home we have a little ritual where one of us will select a wine from the cellar and present it to the other as a blind tasting. Two nights ago, Kate grabbed a brown paper wine bag and descended to the cellar to find a good "stumper" for me to guess.
The ground rules are simple…. Analyze the wine on virtues of taste, aroma, mouth feel and color and try to name the grape variety, region and age range. If you are real bold you might even guess a particular winery and year. Kate had selected a bottle of Hogue Cabernet Sauvignon that we had cellared for the past few years. This wine turned out to be a real "stumper" and totally delicious. The color was dark ruby with crimson hues. The nose offered sweet caramel, strawberries and cherries. In the mouth this was a medium to full bodied wine with ample tannins to completely coat the front of your tongue and palate. The wine had sweet dark fruit and berry flavor with some herbal and spice characteristics. The firm tannins give this wine a delightful dryness that complimented the muscular structure. This is a wine that we bought for about $6, but it was performing better than many wines at three times the price. I could not "guess" this wine with my initial impressions being a $15-20 Grenache from Spain. Kate was glad she stumped me and is looking forward to "doing better than I did" on her next blind tasting. This Hogue wine proves that there are great values from Washington State. Bravo Hogue!
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