Today I decided to get a bit intricate with my wine tasting while continuing my husband’s lessons in how to “taste.”  The nights are still cool in Florida so I asked if he wanted to try red or white.  As soon as he said red, I knew where to go.  I know we are not supposed to know where our Block wines come from, and for the most part, we don’t.  There are two wines that we carry that I know come from the same place, but with very different attitude.  I don’t have to tell you where they come from, but you may know them by Block 115 and Block 610.

One of the differences you see with these two wines is apparent on the bottle.  On 610 you see the word Pommard (clone).  The wine is grown in France, but cloned into the United States. In case you are wondering, a clone is a new grapevine replicated from a known mother vine by taking a cutting from the mother or one of its cloned, identical descendants.  I like to think of it like my grandmother (many of you may be able to relate) who used to be able to look at a plant and know right away if it could grow from a cutting.  Many times she would have cutting shears with her and randomly cut a leaf off someone’s plant. Some people have a green thumb, I think she had a green hand.  But, back to business.

We opened both bottles and I poured them in our Burgundy glasses to get the best result.  As we spoke of the white paper test in my last blog, I had my husband do that again.  At first he thought they both looked the same, but as he went back and forth a couple times he found the 610 looked just slightly darker, both purple, but 610 with a deeper-plum skin color.  On the taste, I like that he said there was not heat (alcohol) and he felt that it even came from a cool climate (he’s getting better and better at this!).

Tasting then began with 115.  He got blackberry and red cherry with a mellow tannin.  I even asked him a food pairing and he came up with bacon wrapped pork medallions.  I do like where he is going with this.

610: The bouquet was different but the same, boulder flavor, black cherry.  The distinction for him was 610 was more earthy, had a bit more tannin.  But both were similar…finally I asked which he preferred and he came back to the 115, which was perfect since I prefer the 610.  We drank and enjoyed both bottles that evening.  It was nice to drink good wine with my great man.

Kathleen Anderson, Northwest FL Wine Supervisor. Follow me on Twitter @abcwinekat