A Black Ankle wine blind tasting: wild words, surprising winners(1)
“Good?” “Dry?” “Drinkable?” Corner BYOB chef Bernard Dehaene would never think of using such dull words to describe wine!
Photo by: Fern Shen
So here it is, The Brew’s first-ever wine-tasting – a blinded taste-off designed to help readers figure out whether the award-winning wines of Maryland’s Black Ankle Vineyards are, well, worth the price.
The idea arose after I went to visit their bucolic, sustainable operation out in Frederick and realized I was going to have to test their product with a clear head back in non-bucolic Baltimore.
So we found the perfect hosts, Corner BYOB in Hampden, and a great lineup of competitors, focusing on Viognier-type whites and Cabernet Franc-dominated reds. We pitted a Black Ankle white (their 2010 Bedlam $28) and their award-winning red (2008 Crumbling Rock $45) against comparable, in many cases lower-priced bottles from South America, France and California.
Cecile Fenix kept all the wines straight and their identitites secret. (Photo by Fern Shen)
But if I thought this experience was going to be more mundane and empirical than my lovely day at the winery, I was quickly proven wrong by our celebrity taster, Corner BYOB’s chef, Bernard Dehaene. If they ever hold a competition for wildest wine-tasting vocabulary, Dehaene’s got a mortal lock on it.
This was clear as soon as our three-person panel began sipping the first white.
(Corner BYOB owner Cecile Fenix and Brew editor Fern Shen poured, taking care to keep the identity of the four whites and four reds a secret. I took notes on the dialogue and Fern kept score, as the tasters rated each wine according to a 1 to 4-star system.)
“A little fruity, with a dash of pepper,” I observed.
“Sweet, but not a dessert wine.” Greg Krauss, Fern’s husband and another taster, pronounced the first glass “sweet, with just a touch of acidity – earthy and spicy.”
Then came Dehaene. After much swirling, inhaling and scrutinizing, the chef sipped and then spoke:
“This tastes a little like sweet water, with a touch of cress. Tastes a bit like the aroma of young bark.” (Better, perhaps than if it resembled old bark!)
After another sip, he said decisively: “Lingering taste. I think it would be good with foie gras. I would guess it sells for just under $20.”
He decanted these pronouncements, in his strong Belgian accent, with such authority and precise, peculiar imagery that we didn’t care that it was actually (as we found out later) a $47 bottle of wine. Greg and I may not have his command of language, but we have some wine drinking chops, so we gave it a go.
“Interesting and earthy, with long legs, but a sip or two are enough for me,” I said. “A true Pinot Gris,” Greg offered. Luckily we had our numerical scoring system to fall back on and the three of us turned out to pretty much concur.
What We Were Drinking:
Pinot Gris Cuvee St. Catherine Domaine Weinbach 2009 (Alsace) ($47)
Final Score:
Second Place
Lobster bits, one of the small dishes Corner BYOB brought out. (Photo by Fern Shen)
Amuse Bouche (The Food!)
From there, it was on to our second, third, fourth glass and many more. But before I continue, I’ll just run down the list of some of the small plates the kitchen sent out at, I presume, Dehaene’s direction.
There were pommes Parisienne, roasted mini potatoes, each half scooped out and filled with caviar and sour cream, duck rillettes, with cherries and cherry foam, smoked salmon rolls, spicy lobster bits and a very inviting cheese platter.
These amuse bouche, served with slices of baguette, balanced the wine well and kept our palates tingling. Some of them were spectacular and I hope they find a place on the regular menu.
The Rest of the Whites: “Like a forest in the morning!”
Our second white appealed to me, but to the others, not so much. I felt it was “lightly aromatic, with an apple and pear fruitiness – interesting enough to sip on its own.”
Greg, meanwhile, said “mild flowery taste with limited complexity…slightly peppery…some Viognier taste.”
Chef Dehaene and Greg Krauss, tasting away. (Photo by Fern Shen)
Dehaene, after swirling the glass and observing that it was “clear, light yellow” with “medium-long legs” declared it “slightly metallic.”
Ouch.
“Ripe Asian pear, slightly salty, almost a salt water taffy,” he continued. “Would go well with broiled scallops.”
What We Were Drinking:
Black Ankle Bedlam 2010 (Maryland) ($28)
Final score:
Third Place
On to our next white, which turned out to be the winner. Dehaene started us off:
“It looks like the yellow of French bistro wall and smells like a forest in the morning,” he said. “A hint of almonds and citrus that would go well with trout or mussels.” (He always had a food pairing idea.)
Chef Dehaene took his winetasting assignment seriously. (Photo by Fern Shen)
Greg thought it was “complex, sweet and floral with a crisp medium body.”
I declared it the best so far: “very crisp, with a long finish. Dry and complex, with a floral hint. Not overly acetic.” “I really like the layered mouth-feel,” I said. “It kind of makes you smile.”
What We Were Drinking:
Yalumba Viognier 2010 (Australia) ($12)
Final score:
First Place
On to our last white, which quickly proved to be our least favorite. It elicited this from Dehaene: “It’s like opening an old trunk in the attic: dusty but not moldy.”
“Similar to the last one, but a little less floral, a little harsher,” said Greg. “Too much of a spicy edge.” I thought it was viscous, with “a heavy mouth-feel. Tart, rather than lively.”
Dehaene wasn’t done. “I found it annoying after a few sips,” he complained. “It’s got a little bit of that thing when you eat a honeycomb – the beeswax granules.” Ouch.
What We Were Drinking:
Mt. Vineyards, Pride Viognier, 2009 (California) ($36)
Final Score:
Fourth Place
So, final rankings on the whites:
First Place: Yalumba Viogier 2010 ($12)
Second Place: Cuvee St. Catherine Domaine Weinbach 2009 ($47)
Third Place: Black Ankle’s Bedlam 2010 ($28)
Fourth Place: Mt. Vineyards’ Pride Viognier 2009 ($36)
The Reds: “Blood of the Bull, Baby!”
If the whites had elicited mild approval and general agreement, the reds brought out big enthusiasm and significant disagreement over which was the best. Our first glass (in the end our highest-scoring red) produced the weirdest, most beyond-parody Dehaene metaphor yet.
“It’s like when you go to the zoo and open the doors – it’s got that parrot feathery scent. And at the end of that you smell pine needles,” he said. Another sip.
“It’s like a very dark strawberry stem. I’m not saying the strawberry is rotten, just very ripe,” he said, declaring it a $38 bottle of wine.
