Calibration Tasting Time, Thanks to Mirassou Sunset Red

2013-06-19 20.07.19Truth be told, we’ve never been big fans of the whole pay for play phenomenon – where companies send bloggers their products in exchange for a nice blurb or review. Blame it on Anne’s journalistic background, where there was this virtual firewall between the content and the advertising sides of the business. Or there was supposed to be.

And then, one of Anne’s colleagues from Generation Fabulous. Chloe Jeffreys, hooked up with a publicist for Mirassou wines and Chloe asked Anne (and the other GenFab women) to help out. Well, gee. If there’s wine involved, we’re always ready to lend a hand.

So while we don’t normally accept wine samples for review, we thought what the heck, and since Mirassou is widely-available and retails for around $12, why not write it up as a calibration tasting?

What, you ask, is a calibration tasting? It’s a way to kick sand in the metaphorical face of wine snobs who think that there is only one way to taste wine. Reality check, no two tongues (or noses) experience flavor in exactly the same way. So if Mike is tasting cherries and you’re thinking, “I’m tasting raspberry. What’s wrong with me?” there is absolutely nothing wrong. Yours and Michael’s tongue just perceive the given wine in different ways. And let’s not even get into what Anne does or does not taste. So a calibration tasting is where we write up what Mike tasted and you compare it to what you tasted, so you know that when Michael tasted cherries, you’re most likely going to taste raspberries and then when we do tasting notes, they will make more sense to you because you can substitute what you taste for what we write.

Okay. So the wine re received for review was the Mirassou 2011 Sunset Red blend, and it is an interesting one, too. For one thing, it’s a blend of pinot noir, merlot and zinfandel. Now, you won’t see it on the label too often, but it’s not all that unusual for winemakers to add a bit of zin to punch up the fruit flavors in some wines. Keep in mind, wineries can call a wine by a single variety name, such as cabernet sauvignon, as long as at least 75 percent of the wine came from that grape. So there could be up to 25 percent zinfandel in that cab sauv, but the winery doesn’t have to say so.

That being said, nobody, but nobody blends pinot noir. For one thing, it’s too expensive. Or folks are just too persnickety about the variety. It doesn’t mean that pinot noir can’t be blended or shouldn’t be blended. It just very rarely is. Which is something that makes the Sunset Red stand out right there.

What we got was a very nice party wine, with a dark color. The nose also presented with some black or blue berry. In short, both color and nose were zin-like without the icky jamminess that Anne so violently despises. Flavor-wise, Michael picked up on cherry, vanilla and berry flavors and some nice acidity, although that eventually opened up after an hour or so and lost the acidity in favor of more fruit and creamy richness. All in all, it was a very nice party wine, in that it tastes really good by itself, but it can still (especially when first opened) stand up to a nice salad and grilled steak.

Let us know what you think in the comments.