After tasting the 7 wines, here are my summed-up impressions:
Sweet-bitter tannins, minty-charcoal-and-black-pepper spice, funky/dusty smells, stale beef jerky, dark and not very aromatic fruit, alcoholic, not acidic, rough / unrefined.
One other exciting thing happened at the blind tasting - I hit my goal of the smallest possible rank deviation from the group rank (or as I called it in computer science lingo - "smallest edit distance"). Normally, after each taster ranks the wines, the individual scores are added up for the combined group ranking. Considering that many people in the tasting are normally far more experienced than myself, I strive for getting as close to that combined ranking as possible. Last time, I was quite far off. This time, I ranked all wines exactly in accordance with the combined ranking, except I had wines 4 and 5 reversed, but those tied in the combined group rank, with the tie-break resulting against me. (The tie-break looks at how many people preferred this wine as their #2 and so on). So my edit distance was 2! (and could have been counted as 0, with the above caveat!)
For reference, here are my tasting notes:
- Wine A - my rank: 3, group rank: 3 - later revealed as Vinos Sin-Ley "m3" by Diego Fernandez 2005 - Nose: moss, dust, warm funk, some cream & raspberry. Taste: bitter, tannic.
- Wine B - my rank: 5, group rank: 4 (tied with 5) - later revealed as Altos de la Hoya 2003 - Note: meat, jerkey, funk, stinky, barn. Taste: soapy, charcoal
- Wine C - my rank: 1, group rank: 1 - later revealed as Casa Castillo Las Gravas 2000 - Nose: less funk, the cleanest of the bunch. Taste: good, a bit green, tannic, I like it.
- Wine D - my rank: 2, group rank: 2 - later revealed as Bodegas Hijos de Juan Gil 2003 - Nose: cream & lush, coffee. Taste: soft, creamy, ripe, sweet tannins. I like it.
- Wine E - my rank: 4, group rank: 5 (tied with 4) - later revealed as Bodegas Olivares Jumilla Panarroz 2004 - Nose: dust. Taste: sweet, low acid, bitter fine texture, tannic.
- Wine F - my rank: 7, group rank: 7 - later revealed as Castaño Solanera 2003 - Nose: dust, leather, canned fish. Taste: bitter burnt sweet blueberry.
- Wine G - my rank: 6, group rank: 6 - later revealed as Bodegas Luzon Monastrell 2004 - Nose: funky, cured dust, blueberry, pepper, green berry, green wood, weedy, a bit alcoholic. Taste: green tannins, soft texture, sweet bitter spice & tannin.

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