Good Morning!

After 4 days of amazing college basketball, the upsets, the Cinderella stories are starting to emerge and the sweet 16 are now in place for the March Madness of NCAA men’s basketball. I am a huge college basketball fan and not just of the men’s game, I love women’s college ball as much or possibly more.

Last year, I set up my blog to start with 64 wines and eliminate wines until I had my number 1 wine of the year. (This is totally a personal wine competition). I start by taking all my wine tasting notes from the year and start looking for the wines I absolutely went crazy for. In the last 12 months, I have tasted 1600 wines and it was really easy for me to sift through the notes and find about 200 wines I really, really found to be different and fantastic. The hard part was sorting to get to the 64 wines to start this year’s March Madness!

I have divided the 64 into 4 regions just like the real March Madness tournament. I have given each region a fun name and will unveil a different region each day this week. My hope is while you are out and about if you see one of these wines, you will try them as well. Today’s region is what I have named Big Ass Red wine Region!

As normal, I will remind you that for me many wines I sample are excellent, but sometimes the place I experience them or the event I am attending or the people I enjoy them with really make these wine go from being great to being something amazing and possibly life changing! You may or may not agree with me on my wine picks but if you had the same experience as me, you might feel the same way.

You will see I have bottles of wine from $15-400.00. I discovered something interesting about my palate over the last year and that is I have found a real fondness for wines from other countries, something that surprised me.

Here are my top 16 Big Ass Red wines

2001 Hardys Eileen Hardy Shiraz Australia $60

2004 Clos de Los Siete Malbec/Merlot Argentina $20

2008 Denner The Dirt Worshiper Paso Robles, California $45

2003 LeRiche Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve South Africa $40

2009 Crocker & Starr Cabernet Franc Napa, California $90

1998 Domaine du Cayron Gigondas, Rhone, France $85

2005 Joesph Phelps Insignia, California Blend $200

2004 Herdade do Esporao Reserva Tempranillo $30

2005 Marchesi di Gresy Barbaresco Martinenga Piedmont, Italy $60

2000 Casa Lapostolle Clos Apalta Merlot/Cabernet Sauvignon/Carmenre Chile $21

2004 Clos Marie, Pic-Saint-Loup Cuvee Simon Syrah/Greneche France $33

2004 Chateau La Nerthe Chateauneuf-du-Pape Rhone, France $42

1999 Casa Lapostolle Merlot Chile (Priceless to me, $100)

2009 Braida di Giacomo Bologna Barbera d’Asti Montebruna $23

2004 Nord Estate Wine Petite Sirah Jonquil Vineyards Napa Valley, California $40

2009 Neyen Cabernet Sauvignon Chile $85

Of these 16 wines my personal number 1 wine is 1999 Casa Lapostolle Merlot Chile…. I had this wine while sitting on the outdoor patio of the residence of Lapostolle in Chile with Madame Alexandre Marnier-Lapostolle and the winemakers of Lapostolle. It might have been the most enjoyable few hours of entire month long trip in Chile. This wine was like red liquid velvet. I know that is not really a very elegant wine description but it was so smooth, so berry, so lush, so full, so luxurious, I don’t have a strong enough vocabulary to fully encompass how this wine tasted…but I can tell you how this moment in my life felt…so let me tell you about that…Imagine, being surrounded by the people with the talent to take some of the best grapes in a fairly “new” wine producing region and painstakingly watch and monitor wines until you create wines that are not only award winning but are so highly revered all over the world. But these folks were down to earth, they don’t take themselves seriously. They talked about their kids, life and all the regular details of daily living with the causal attitude of your next door neighbor.

I sat with Jacque, Andrea, Jerome and Madame Alexandre and listened to they stories and we ate and laughed. I was sitting across the table from a visionary in the wine industry (and spirits too), who told me about her trip to San Antonio, Texas and in the next breath we talked about the filming of The Winemakers reality show…the next minute we talked about our sons, our hopes and dreams for their futures. Her sons are a bit older than my stepson, but their journeys are the same and the entire time sitting there, I could have easily felt intimidated by all the greatness surrounding me, but it really felt like a family gathering and the energy was as relaxed as they wine.

As you can see this wine was my number one pick of the year and is in the Final Four of my March Madness of Wine…this one might be hard to beat…This wine is the Kentucky of this years’ real NCAA tournament!

Tomorrow…we will move on to the next region…Big Bold White wines!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi