The first business meeting of the New Year was aptly commenced by a ‘new world versus old’ blind tasting. After a bit of tooing and froing it was clear that wine A had more complexity, more on the nose and was our clear favorite, with a mixture of fruits and cedary wood. Wine B was good enough to enhance the lamb lasagne verdi but somewhat lacking in depth. Wine A indeed was the Pavie, although we were slightly worried, having watched the film ‘Bottle Shock’ the night before.

Lots was discussed, including the proposed structure of the vertical tasting, introductory talk, costings and feedback sheets.

We structured the SMSA event into eight rounds (further details here). Rather pleasingly, we had both already written proposals for the structure and both came up with near identical plans. Other proposed events will be a Channing school tasting in Sept/Oct and a spring WanderCurtis tasting, possibly at Jacksons Lane/Red Hedgehog/Highgate Society/Bull or other venue. It will be an exciting year!

We may attend the Justerini and Brooks Burgundy 2008 tasting next week and Decanter Bordeaux tasting in February.