Malta Wine Tasting Team

Back to tasting with a new lineup sponsor! Divino Wines & Spirits brought us a selection of delicious, seriously tough bottles to blind guess.

In a global competition such as Championnat du monde de dégustation La RVF niche varietals rarely appear, so you want to call wines that are likely to score points and avoid exotic guesses. But in training, tasting widely is useful as long as our calls make sense.

Long story short: we missed most of them, but learned a lot.

The Corpinnat had such a sharp edge that we called it Loire. The Müller-Thurgau showed a Sauvignon profile, and we called it accordingly. An intense, oaked Chenin from South Africa had all of us convinced it was Chardonnay.

Then came the moment of glory: we nailed a Muscat of Alexandria from Sicily with a wild guess and scored full points. Pats on the back.

We had the aged, oaked Alvarinho on our cards, then talked ourselves into a safer call and missed it. The Hungarian Pinot Noir… well, we got the Pinot Noir!

We’ll forgive ourselves for failing the excellent Bovale (Graciano) blend from Sardinia and the German Merlot blend. We missed one we really should have got, the Malbec, and then we redeemed ourselves with the Vinsanto from Santorini.
Final score: 65 points from 10 very challenging bottles. Plenty missed, plenty learned. That’s what training is for.
Pierre Finger
Manuel Degiorgio
Rebecca Degaetano
Andrea Bomboklan
Marco Trucco

Thanks again to DiVino Wines & Spirits for the lineup!

A great team tasting with a beautiful🍷lineup 🍷sponsored by The Master Cellar! We started out losing all the coin-flips, narrowing our calls to two options and then choosing the wrong one… Cava vs Prosecco, Bordeaux Blanc vs Italian Sauvignon, Etna vs Fiano. But then we called correctly the actual Fiano, the Gewurtztraminer and we almost got the Friulano (we spotted the Collio). Then we nailed the Carmenere, the Nebbiolo, and the fresh Sauternes. The Chateauneuf was excellent but with an unusual profile (from sandy soils), the Touriga and the Barbera are always very tough calls. A good overall score of 126 points. Team favourites: the intense Fiano from Di Meo and the very elegant Barbaresco Faset from Mura Mura in the legendary 2016 vintage. The team: Matthew DelicataAndrea BomboklanRebecca DegaetanoPierre FingerManuel DegiorgioMarco Trucco preparing for the Championnat du monde de dégustation La RVF

A white-only training flight! Last year, at the Championnat du monde de dégustation La RVF, we missed most whites. Then we were the top team on the reds. So we’ll do some extra work on the whites now, which in general are harder to guess then reds (especially Italians).
We did ok in this BYOB session: the team got the Cava/Corpinnat right, the Condrieu, the Italian Pinot Gris and the Jura Chard. Quintarelli was a super oddball and unfortunately the Rioja was corked.
68 points for 6 wines. Not bad! The team at the tasting: Matthew Delicata Rebecca Degaetano Andrea Bomboklan Marco Trucco.

The road to the world tasting championship continues! We have to defend and improve our 12th position of last year and we need to try new wines constantly! This 🍷lineup🍷was sponsored by M&Z What’s in the Glass and presented by
Marko Vucinic: a nice selection of tricky wines! This time we had great calls with the whites and fumbled with the reds. We got the first four wines almost spot-on: the Cremant de Bourgogne, the Sauvignon, the Cotes du Rhône white and the Burgundy Chard. Maybe a little bit of over-confidence kicked in and we missed the second Chard (Mercurey) and the spritzy Riesling. Among the reds we nailed the beautiful Rioja, the classic Barolo but we flipped the wrong side of the coin on the CabF/Carmenere toss-up call. Overall 109 points and some extra experience. Team favourites: the excellent Viré-Clessé from Chanson and the Viña Arana Gran Reserva from La Rioja Alta.
The Maltese Wine Knights at this tasting: Manuel Degiorgio Pierre Finger Matthew Delicata Marco Trucco. Championnat du monde de dégustation La RVF

The Team is back with a cracking tasting. Seven members and Petros Skarmoutsos MC in the house! Farsonsdirect sponsored an absolutely stellar 🍷lineup🍷of wines, with legendary-level producers such as Egon Müller and Chateau Grillet plus benchmarks like La Spinetta for Barbaresco, Quinta do Noval for Douro, Roda for Rioja, Shafer for Napa, Brancaia for Chianti, Berlucchi for Franciacorta, Royal Tokaij, Norton for Mendoza, Faiveley for Marsannay and Chavy Chouet for Meursault. What a treat! We started strong, nailing the Franciacorta, the Mosel Riesling and the white Rioja. The amazing Grillet and the Meursault were just too good to focus on scoring. Among the reds we got the Malbec and the Napa but we scored some points in other wines too. A respectable total of 113 points with 10 rated wines. We called the Barbaresco a Xinomavro probably as a nod to Petros- but we were so wrong! Team favourites: all of them really. The Riesling, the Grillet and the Touriga are just insanely good.
The team at this tasting: Aaron Rizzo Andrea Bomboklan Marco Trucco Manuel DegiorgioPierre Finger Matthew Delicata Rebecca Degaetano. Let’s go to the Championnat du monde de dégustation La RVF and always Visit Malta!