Old School Wine Tasting

What a crazy experience this was! It took everything I thought I knew about wine (granted, that isn't too much) and turned it upside down! 

Blackwood Canyon Winery does what they call, Old School Tasting (by appointment only). They make Burgundian style wine, which is different than our traditional American or 'New World' wines. These wines are processed and fermented in a totally different way and for SO much longer. We tasted 19 year old wine from a barrel that would still need to sit in there for another ten years! The other notable 'old world' difference in this style of wine was that it could, and should, be left open for months on end. In (what I now know as) American wine, you can't leave a bottle open for more than a few days. Burgundian wine is what you see in decanters, sitting on someone's table in an old movie. It not only lasts months but gets better the longer its open. 

I have to say that I enjoyed some late harvest syrah and some of the other red wines we tasted, but I can't say that I enjoyed many of the Burgundian style of white wines. We started tasting whites and at first I wasn't sure these people knew what they were doing.. except who was I to say! 

Once we got into the reds, I could see the wine behind the acid and started to really enjoy the wine when it came to tasting the ports and what would become ports. 

It was truly the most unique wine tasting tour we've ever taken, and hands down the most extensive tasting we've ever done. We got a nice tasting at the counter with food pairings and then we toured and tasted wine out of the barrels that were sitting outside (!!) among the grape vines.

Truly an experience that felt like stepping back in time and far from the usual pretentious wine tasting trip!