This is Part 3 did you miss Part 2 or Part 1?

What does a blind tasting of 10 different wines in 5 battles look like?  Here is a picture of the wines before being wrapped up:

I wanted to assemble more information about the wines but finding direct links to the Kirkland wines proved to be difficult and when I did find something it usually turned out to be the wrong vintage.

The first bubbling duel was Kirkland Champagne at $19.99 per bottle versus Roederer Estate sparkling wine at $18.89 per bottle. The Champagne was the crowd favorite and by a considerable margin.

For the white wines blind tasting I decided to do two Kirkland wines and two different grapes. In the A corner was Kirkland Pinot Grigio at $5.99 and the B corner was the Kirkland Chardonnay at $6.99. The fight was very close but the Chardonnay was victorious. I had actually expected the Chardonnay to win by a wider margin.

Moving to the reds brought a new level of excitement to the group. The first up was  Cameron Hughes #527 at $14.99 against Kirkland Willamette Valley Pinot Noir at $14.99. This was a very close battle with several tasters abstaining because they couldn’t decide. When the smoke cleared and the votes were counted, the Kirkland Pinot won by a single vote.

The “Red Blends” round proved interesting comparing Decoy Sonoma County red at $16.99 with Kirkland Napa Meritage at $11.59. I thought maybe because of the price difference it might be a runaway winner but that was not the case. The Decoy won by a single vote with Paula and Rich not voting.

The “Cabernet” battle pit Louis M Martini Sonoma $11.99 versus Kirkland Napa $12.99 turned out not to be a close race. The winner by a rather large margin was the Louis M Martini from Sonoma.

I have to admit that the results were different than I expected. I think that I need to go back and fine tune the voting process and give the tasting panel more advance warning next time. Can’t wait till the next event!