Need some Red Wine?

Hold on - help is on it's way!!!

Ready to join the club!

One of our major mission goals for Mood Wine is to engage our Club Members in helping us select and describe wines. This way you're discovering them with the perspective of fellow wine lovers as opposed to some wine critic you've never heard of telling you what you should and shouldn't drink.

This being said, we did a Red Wine Panel tasting on Thursday...

Ready - Set - Go!!!

Let's see what happened...
We invited a gang that were able to come on short notice...

L-R, Jim, Casey, Michael (barely showing), Justin, Raymond, David

1. Jim Gross
2. Casey Strachen
3. Michael Killian
4. Justin Ceeko
5.  Raymond (need Raymond's last name and Facebook profile!)
6. David Lahti

And of course, we had to have some nibbles... 

Had fun trying lots of this with different wines to see how they changed things

So, once we all sat down, everyone was kindly asked to do a quick little survey first. We asked these two questions:

1. Can you remember when you first realized you loved wine?
2. What bottle of wine would you take on a deserted island, if you could pick only one? The label doesn't matter as much as the type of wine and style of winemaking. 

Suffice it to say - Justin asked us NOT TO JUDGE... LOL

See how seriously our panel took these questions?

Hmmm, favorite wine, favorite wine, deserted island... think-think-think!

 While they were doing this, the wine was poured...

Trust me this was just the beginning!

Of the six wines we tasted all of them had some merit from some of the guys, but three of them were absolute stand-outs;

1. Cabernet - Northern California
2. Syrah - Northern California
3. Tempranillo - Riserva from Spain

I'll talk about those later.

If you don't believe we were having fun, well think again. David is the newest member to our Moodie group, and has a serious wine palate, BUT - he and Jake were next to each other and I'm not sure which one is the most opinionated when it comes to wines they like and dislike... I had to break them up several times...

When David's not out climbing trails, he's staining his teeth purple... LOL

And that Casey... he's wondering, is that more of a prune, or a dried plum I'm getting?

Prune or Dried Plum... hmmmm

Raymond came as Casey's guest... his comments were some of my favorites... SO GLAD HE CAME... thanks to him, we have playful and sexy wines coming your way!!! 

Raymond looks playful and sexy doesn't he?

And of course our beloved NAPA master came... and offered his erudite Bacchanalian opinions...

Hmmm - this wine is red isn't it?

Of course knowing Jim, he'll look up the true definition of Bacchanalian and I'll be in trouble... :-)

Michael got the award for most animated taster. And he said he never takes good pictures - SERIOUSLY?...

MORE!!!

As we finish our tour around the table of tasters, Justin was closest to me... every time he tossed back his next sip, I swear I heard a growing hummed melody of "Creep" by Radiohead ...

Justin... Lalalalalala....

Jake and I love doing these. When you are immersed in a business and focused like we often are, it's great to get other opinions on the wines we hope you'll consider purchasing... as a matter of fact, we are hoping to get over to Riverside and do this with them and San Diego and do it with them too!

We are building Mood Wine for you, so YOU should help us pick wines you'll enjoy!