[blinded by the white...(TJtasting)]

This is the lastest in my series of TJ Tasting - the follow up to my enormously popular search for the everyday red.  After those tastings, I can definitely recommend the Archeo Nero d’Avola for $5 and your feedback so far has been great! [I noticed an empty bottle of it at my friend Dr. Feelgood's house just the other day].  I thought I’d do the same with white wines today, but this time with a twist.  I realize that I need to start reviewing wines that I probably wouldn’t otherwise buy for myself.  Each of us carries our respective knowledge, preconceptions and prejudices into a wine store.  I’m especially critical at Trader Joe’s where my wine knowledge conditions me to believe that 80% of the wines will be awful, based on low price and mass-production.  But this clearly isn’t true - there are a number of TJ’s wines I very much enjoy.  So, to keep my purchasing and tasting bias out of the equation, I’ve called in the reinforcements.

For this post I have enlisted the services of my good friends Sir Benjamin of Bloomington, Michael “The Quencher” Ducca and Audrey Gibbs.  I gave Sir Ben $20 and simple instructions – go to Trader Joe’s and buy three different bottles of white [The tab came to $20.27].  All the bottles were kept in paper bags and marked A, B and C.  After an hour of fridge time, the tasting was on.  I had all of us consider each of the three wines based on color, smell and taste, and to give an overall rating of 1-20 based on whatever criteria we chose.  Only Ben knew the identity of the wines - though I’m not sure that he knew which was which during the tasting.

Here they are, in order of consensus overall points rated, from worst to best of tasting:

The Clear Loser: 2009 Mezzacorona Pinot Grigio - 46 total points, $7.99.  Wow, was this a bad wine.  When you think of good Pinot Grigio, yout think citrus, herbs, grass, stone - fresh clean bright flavors.  All four of us got hung up on the nose of this wine.  It smelled like bad movie theatre popcorn butter from a cinema like the Hopkins Mann 6 that already smells like elk urine.  Consensus tasting notes – cheap, bland, flabby.  Before the reveal, I guessed this one to be a cheap Chardonnay – which does not speak volumes.  To make it worse, it was the most expensive bottle of the lot.  This is a wine to be avoided at all costs.

The Runner Up: 2008 Camelot Chardonnay, California. 54 total points, $5.49.  This one wasn’t horrible.  To me, it had the nicest color.  It had a decent fruit component to it, apples and bananas were common notes during the tasting (as was ‘baby food’).  Everyone said they would buy this again for the price, but I suppose I can’t recommend it just because there is much better Chardonnay to be had at just a few dollars more (I believe that’ll be an upcoming topic here).

Best Of Tasting: 2009 Tres Pinos Three Pines Cuvee, San Louis Obispo County, CA - 59 total points, $4.99.  What!?! Redemption for Tres Pinos!  In my previous post about Trader Joe’s reds, I was none too kind about Tres Pinos, the TJ exclusive from the San Antonio Winery.  This tasting proves my need for a surrogate shopper because based on the red, I never would have bought the white.  It’s not a stunning wine by any means. This blend of Sauvignon Blanc, Gewurztraminer, Chardonnay and Viognier has a light straw color and a very light floral nose.  The sip shows off the Gewurztraminer part of its constituency, with that lychee-heavy middle of the sip, not much of a finish, but the flavors are clean and tasty. Consensus notes – apricot, floral, melon, better as it warms up. After the reveal, all four of us agreed we would buy this again for $5.

So, for those keeping score, the Tres Pinos White goes on the list of G Sheaves approved wines at Trader Joes – though in third place behind the Epicuro Salice Salentino and Archeo Nero d’Avola.  Oh, and tasting note of the evening goes to Michael on the taste of the Mezzacorona Pinot Grigio “bland, but liked it better with each taste – is that a sign of alcoholism?”  Not unless you actually finished the glass of that plonk.