Two things struck me during Sunday's blind tasting and Twitter extravaganza at the Messina Hof winery in Bryan. Messina Hof remains among the pre-eminent producers in Texas, and the winery's Paul Bonarrigo understands the Texas palate, the regional wine business, and quality in a way that not enough people do.
The 10 or so of us who did it had a good time, and twittering (tweeting?) reminded me of my days as a newspaper sports writer. Then, I wrote down play-by-play of what happened on the field. Yesterday, I did play-by-play of the wines we were tasting. I prefer wine play-by-play (though, to be honest, Twitter still seems kind of silly).
I was also reminded that blind tasting is the best possible way to taste wine. I got about half of the wines correct, which was pretty good. And I should have had more. I missed the German ice wine that Paul paired with his late harvest riesling, and I am a bit of an ice wine expert. He also slipped in quite a few ringers, including some high-end California labels.
The Messina Hof late harvest, by the way, was an exceptional wine -- sweet as it should have been, with enough acid to balance the sweetness. One of the other highlights was the Paulo shiraz we had at dinner on Saturday night, which shows how well Texas does syrah.
I'm told you can check out all of the twits by searching #messina_hof at Twitter. And Russ Kane, who put the event together, wrote about it here.
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