Prior to the beginning of the competition we were served a lovely salmon tartare and got an opportunity to taste the winning blends from previous years, including ours. I played it cool and didn't gloat too much. Mostly because I was in a bit of pain and acting the fool was pretty much physically impossible.
Come competition time we were seated at a table off in the corner with other previous blending competition winners. While I'd like to say that we were separated from the rest of the revelers because we were all old hat and knew what we were doing, I think the real reason might have been because we were - as a group - the loudest and most obnoxious. To quote my new friend Chris, "Table 8!" (Since this is a PG blog, I am prevented from quoting anything from Randy.)
As in years before, the competition was a blind one in that we didn't know what wines we were blending with. We picked out tempranillo, zinfandel, and cabernet franc, but the grenache completely stumped us. Like last year, we went with a majority cab franc blend. We thought our wine had won the table, but it turns out The S's - the winners from the third year - had the winning concoction from our table. It also turns out that we had only a slight difference between our wines. While we went 60/20/10/10 they went 60/20/15/5. At the end of the day Brad announced the winners, with The S's coming in third overall. Ultimately, a new winning couple was chosen and added to our illustrious ranks.
It was a really fun day and I'm glad we went, but it did knock me flat on my kiester. I slept the majority of the way home, much of the night, and much of the following day. Testing the waters with attending that event is what made me decide that it would have been idiocy for us to attend this weekend's Oaktoberfest in the Dimond. Having met up with friends afterward, I'm so glad we made that decision as yesterday was ridiculously hot ... maybe the hottest day of the year so far.
