Sangiovese Tasting – Round 2

We did a Sangiovese-inspired wine & food tasting a while back –  it was a great success, so we decided to expand the efforts, increasing the number of wines, the geographic scope, and the number of tasters.

After some more research, we found a selection of wines that were mostly sourced from local stores (Tampa to Venice FL), with all the wines easy to obtain.  We picked eight wines for this effort, keeping to wines that were at least 80% Sangiovese, and retaining two wines from the previous Sangiovese tasting.

This event included:

• Volpaia Chianti Classico (2007) – Tuscany
• Casanova di Neri Rosso di Montelcino (2011) – Tuscany
• Paolo Bea Montefalco Riserva (2007) – Umbria
• Mocali Morellino di Scansano (2012) – Tuscany
• Tolaini Al Passo (2009) – Tuscany
• Tre Monte Campo di Mezzo (2011) – Emilia Romagna
• Avignonese Vino Nobile di Montepulciano (2011) – Tuscany
• Bibi Graetz It’s a Game (2010) – Tuscany

We keep to a very simple scoring system:

1. Weasel pee
2. Let’s move on – drinkable, but save it for cooking wine
3. Not bad – might buy it. Pass me another slice of pizza
4. This is good stuff – I want more!
5. Yes, yes, yes! (“I’ll have what she’s having.”)

Each wine was open for 3 hours at room temperature.
Here are the results from the tasting (a full write up of each wine, with the pricing and the source, follows):

1. Volpaia Chianti Classico —————————Average score:  3.55———Best: 0 people
2. Casanova di Neri Rosso di Montelcino ———–Average score: 4.09———Best: 1 person
3. Paolo Bea Montefalco Riserva———————Average score: 3.55———Best: 1 person
4. Mocali Morellino di Scansano———————-Average score: 4.09——–Best: 6 people
5. Tolaini Al Passo—————————————Average score: 4.45——–Best: 3 people
6. Tre Monte Campo di Mezzo————————Average score: 4.00——–Best: 4 people
7. Avignonese Vino Nobile di Montepulciano——Average score: 4.45——–Best: 2 people
8. Bibi Graetz It’s a Game——————————Average score: 3.73——–Best: 2 people

There was widely varying opinions for both the Mocali and Tre Monte, while the Casanova di Neri and Avignonese had the least amount of variation in scoring.