Ghost Pines Merlot 2008

The instructor I have for my WSET class is Jason Whiteside. He is a certified WSET instructor and knows a ton about wine. However, I don’t think he’s an excellent teacher. He’s not very energetic and he kind of glosses over some things that will end up being very important. That being said, he does do an excellent job of pointing out things that either have been part of past exams or are concepts that they focus on during exams. In the end, we will be very well prepared for taking and passing the exam (This is not the same as completely understanding the material which is a great failing of many educational systems IMO).

So one of the things that Jason has kind of glossed over is the whole concept of the blind tasting. A couple of posts back I detailed the WSET criteria that we are to use in judging a wine during a blind tasting and how we are to write up our tasting notes. However, the part that Jason missed stressing is that a blind tasting is a deductive experience. Therefore each and every one of those descriptors is a clue as to what this wine is and where it came from.

Take the wine Ms Cocktail provided to me last night. One cannot just task a sip of wine and simple deduce that this is a merlot. You kind of have to work at it. This was a medium intensity colored wine. This tells me that the wine is from a region that isn’t too hot. I get more validation of this because there is a medium (+) acidity and a medium alcohol level. Grapes grown in hot climates tend to have a greater intensity to the color but more importantly, they will have high sugar and lower acidity. Grapes grown in cooler area will exhibit the opposite, higher acidity and lower sugars. So right there, I can rule out several wines including Australian Shiraz.

However, the color isn’t super light and the flavors and aromas suggest black fruit and American oak (There is a whole post to be written up about the difference between French, American and Hungarian oak. Having done barrel samples of each one with a single varietal really highlighted those differences for me.). That means that I can also rule out French wines and American Pinot Noirs. Finally, while it has spent time in oak, it does have medium tannins and a medium body. That leads one more towards a merlot than a cabernet sauvignon.  With that, I proclaimed this wine to be a mid-priced, California Merlot although I didn’t have great confidence in my judgment. I was quite surprised and also quite pleased to find that I had nailed this one exactly.

Tasting notes:

This is a clear, ruby colored wine of medium intensity with legs. It has a clean, developing nose of medium(+) intensity with aromas of blackberry and oak. It is a dry wine with medium(+) acidity, medium tannins, medium alcohol an medium body. It has medium intense flavors of blackberry, black cherry and vanilla with a medium long finish. It is an acceptable wine that is mid-priced and is ready to drink now but will improve in the bottle.