Nov 3/10 - [yellowtail] Reserve lunch and tasting at Buca

The Time and Date: Wednesday, November 3, 2010  11AM to 2 PM

The Event: A [yellow tail] Reserve wine tasting with founder John Casella and Zoltan Szabo.

The Venue: Buca Restaurant, King Street

The Target Audience: wine media

The Availability/Catalogue: The reserve wines are working their way through the Ontario system. 200,000 cases in total were made for international distribution.

The Quote/Background: John Casella spoke on his company. Eight million cases have been sold in the US (out of 11.5 million total), The grapes come from 39 different regions. The wine is exceptionally fruit-driven, but the Reserve has some advanced levels of complexity, primarily due to wood aging. Zoltan took us through the tasting, which was blind. We were to compare four different Shiraz wines and four different Cabernet Sauvignon wines, all from Australia. Yellow Tail Reserves were part of the mix. I could not identify any wines in each flight, but I did surmise that the most fruity of the wines would probably be the Yellow Tail Reserve – and I was right.

The Wines:

 

**** Four Stars (91+ in Quality/Price Rating terms):

-Three Rings Shiraz 2007 Barossa (everybody's fave shiraz)

-Yellow Tail Reserve Chardonnay 2009

 

***1/2 Three and a Half Stars (88 – 90 in Quality/Price Rating terms):

-Yellow Tail Reserve Shiraz 2009

-Layer Cake Shiraz 2009 SEA

-Heartlands Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 Limestone Coast (my fave cab)

 

*** Three Stars (85 – 87 in Quality/Price Rating terms):

-Yellow Tail White Sparkler (rince bouche)

-Angove's The Bull Shiraz 2007 SEA

-Mitolo Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 McLaren Vale ($65!)

-Jim Barry The Cover Drive Cabernet Sauvignon 2006 SEA

-Yellow Tail Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 (the fave cabernet sauvignon)

 

The Food: a first rate selection of nodini as an appetizer, followed by a cavatelli pomodori with nova tomatoes and capra di alma (wine: Yellow Tail Reserve Chardo9nnay 2009). Then there was a beef short rib with polenta and grana padano (wine: Yellow Tail Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 and Reserve Shiraz 2009).

The Downside: a bit of a chlorine odour in my corner made me move to another location, but the smell dissipated after awhile.

The Upside: there was a limo livery service to drop us off.

The Contact Person: Nicole Paara npaara@harbingerideas.com

The Marketing Effectiveness of this Event (numerical grade): 91 – it was a good exercise.

 

Chimo!  www.deantudor.com AND http://gothicepicures.blogspot.com