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I just wanted to share a couple shots I took recently in the Plus vineyard just at budbreak, a day or 2 before VinItaly. I was a wonderful day and these photos came out so well...
In these you really get an idea of the altitiude and position of these vines and how they get sun and air all day for perfect ripening and clean fruit...
As a winery, we gather periodically to blind-taste the competition. It's an exercise in market research, honing our palates and seeing where we stand.
Last Monday we gathered at Valter Scarbolo's La Frasca to Blind-taste through SIXTEEN different Morellini di Scansano, along with our own I Perazzi from La Mozza...
We were all in attendance: Maurizio, Dennis, Emilio and Valter to my left...
Gabriele to my right...
And Andrea and Giulio across the table...
All the wines were from the 2009 vintage and came from producers making from 7,000 to 1.5 million bottles. Quality was quite variable, but of the wines that did well in the tasting, lovely cherry fruit and an amicable structure seemed to be the common denominators. Some wines were flawed and some seemed outrageously manipulated.
I won't go into a full-disclosure publication of notes and scores, but I will say this: After all was said and done, and the scores tallied (eliminating the high- and low-scores, olympics-style), our own I Perazzi Morellino di Scansano placed a solid second, a mere one and a half-points behind the winner.
What does this tell us? Obviously we have work to do. Our goal is never to come in second-place, so we will continue to improve... We've had some great success with I Perazzi Morellino: 90-points, being called "One of the best values in Italian wine today" by Antonio Galloni, tons and tons of satisfied customers all over the world... That doesn't mean we can get lazy.
These tastings assure us we always need to strive to be the best.
