Good Morning!

I have been re-reading all my tasting notes from the past year and I am preparing for my second annual March Madness of wines! I forgot how many amazing wines I had last year during all my travels. I am going to do the same as last year, pick my top 64 wines and divide them into four regions and slowly eliminated wines until we discover what wine I think it the best wine I tried last year.

After looking at my notes, I tasted over 1600 wines…YIKES! That might sound like a lot of wine but I was talking to a dude who is a wine judge and he tastes and judges all year and he said last year he tasted over 9000 wines at competitions. So, with that info, I want to be a judge..not really, being a judge to me, would be like being a Sommelier…I’d love to know what they know and I’d love to have had the experiences they have had, but I am not willing to put that much work in on my palate at this point in my life.

Back to the brackets, if you are not familiar with the whole bracket thing, go to the internet and then go to the NCAA basketball tournament and print out a bracket. I did and then I started with the four regions and gave each of them a “sub title” my regions are split into the following regions, Bubbles, red, white and whatever is left…..I know that sounds kinda lame, but I always have more reds and whites than I bracket can hold so I have to lump them into the extra regions bracket.

Last year, I caught a lot of flack having two wines that are not even closely related competing against each other….Really? This is not scientific, this is Tammi’s March Madness, this is only for my entertainment and this is all about my tastes and experience with the wine. Last year I really was on a Pinot Noir kick and it was reflected in my brackets and regions….this past year I spent a significant amount of time in Chile and I guarantee many, many of the wines from South America will show up on my top 64 wines.

As I started looking at my top wines, It was easy to peel through about 1200 of the wines, they were all lovely, but the last 400 left for me to chose from really made me take a bunch of notes and I loved all these wines. I did not use a price point on my wines this year and I have wines from $10-$400 a bottle.

Many of these wines might surprise you and some surprised me and I had to also consider the environment where I had them, who I was with when tasting, where they paired with foods etc….I would bet some of my fav wines will be the ones I had when I was with Andrea Leon, winemaker of Lapostolle, Dr. Charles Thomas of Chateau Thomas wines and then when I was with friends and family during my world of traveling.

Anyway, I just wanted you to know, I was working on my brackets and be prepared to follow my wine madness!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi