Sibling Rivalry: Napa vs. Sonoma Chardonnay
As a homage to summer (or lack thereof here in Northern California) we decided to do a competition all about Chardonnay. A big thank you to Falcor Winery for hosting the event and providing us with some much need full bodied reds during the "before party."
The Judges' Results
After pre tasting all 25 wines (blind) we put the 5 top Napa wines and 5 top Sonoma wines on the judges table. The wines on the judges table in no particular order were:
Petroni-Sonoma Producer, Napa Fruit
The judges spit, swirled, sniffed, and sometimes, swallowed. After spending a lot of time with the wines this is their conclusion:
The three top highest scoring wines in order are:
All three are from Napa. Petroni ended up being a bit of a ringer. We all thought it was Sonoma fruit but when we carefully read the back of the label we learned it was actually Napa fruit.
However, anyone who has judged anything knows that just because you score something the highest does not make it your favorite. The judges favorites, tied for first, are Petroni (Napa) and Bourassa (Sonoma Coast).
We had six fabulous judges, including the Cal Ripken of Sibling Rivalry for perfect attendance..James Matuszewski, your Local Wino. He was the only judge to pick out the one wine (Kopriva) that was unoaked.
We also had Christopher Vandendriessche..another judge with a difficult name to spell. Christopher is the winemaker for his family’s charming winery, White Rock (who incidently was one of the big winners for Sibling Rivalry Syrah).
Scott Jordan, owner of Cellars of Sonoma, has actually always been a judge behind the scenes. He usually hosts a pre-event judging session at Cellars of Sonoma where he often sits in as judge. We have long been impressed with his blind tasting palate. He didn’t disappoint this time. What the public doesn’t know is that judges are also tested on their blind tasting knowledge being asked to guess county, ava, barrel program, and price point. Scott is a contender for winner.
I figured the one way I could finally meet my long time facebook friend, Alana Gentry, was to ask her to judge Sibling Rivalry. The “Girl with a Glass” did indeed, bring her own glass and she made Sibling Rivalry history..the first ever perfect score which she awarded to Petroni.
Augusta MacPhearson told us that she now feels like a “real wine professional” now that she has judged at Sibling Rivalry. But she’s just being humble. Augusta is a level 2 certified sommelier and a a consulting wine buyer for a restaurant in addition to working at Biale Vineyards.
Cornelia Mathis is our first ever out-of-area judge. Cornelia is the former owner of CORK Enoteca in Sausalito, and is not the Sommelier for Sociale restaurant in San Francisco. She also does some wine consulting in the city.
The test was proctored by Andrew Healy. Andrew probably needs no introduction, but for those of you don’t know, Andrew is owner of Three Rock Wine Company, a consulting company for wineries and other businesses that has in-depth knowledge of social media. He is also the man behind the Napa Facebook Meet-up and When Irish Wines are Smiling.
The public vote:
Here are the results:
Three wineries tied for number one:
The favorite wine for females: Bonneau (Sonoma)
The Manliest wine: Petroni (Napa)
2nd place favorite is White Rock Vineyards (Napa)
3rd place favorite is Mayo (Sonoma)
We had a couple of ringers out there. For one thing, two wines that we thought were Sonoma wines we later learned were actually Napa fruit. Therefore we had 2 tables that had 2 Napa wines. And then to make things really interesting, we had a California AVA wine. Therefore, only 9 tables had a head to head competition, Napa vs. Sonoma. Sonoma won 5 tables, Napa won 4.
The results are pretty much split down the middle when it comes to Chardonnay with a slight edge going to Napa. Next Chardonnay competition we’ll throw in more unoaked Chardonnay.
Here are the wines that we poured along with the table number on which they were placed:
10. Schug-S-TB-6
11. Bourrasa-S-TB-7
12. Ceja-N-TB-7
13. Dunstan-S-TB8
17. Kopriva-S-TB-10
21.HDV-N-TB-8
22. Leto-S-TB-11
23. Mayo-S-TB-12
25. Falcor-N-Tb-9
A special thank you to Patrick Williams who MC-ed the event. Patrick is the host of Pappy Hour on Napa TV.
Follow Sibling Rivalry on facebook to find out when our next Sibling Rivalry will take place.