Last year at the 2016 Wine Bloggers Conference in Lodi, the highlight of the opening reception was the Masthead Sangiovese. I adored this wine from the moment I first tasted it and kept asking how I could get more.
Luckily I was sent a sample bottle of the Masthead Sangiovese ( in October of 2016) and I opened it in November. Made by four bloggers, the wine is a beautiful mouthful of dark fruit with harmonious tannins, bright acidity and a delightful blend of spice and earthiness.
The wine is 100% Sangiovese blended from two lots of Mohr-Fry Ranch, Block 433 in Lodi California. As I mentioned above, I was wowed by this wine when I tasted it in Lodi at the Wine Bloggers Conference and was very happy I was able to try it again away from the WBC chaos and enjoy it over the course of an evening. The particular evening I opened the wine was election night 2016, which had a chaos of its own of course, but I tired to ignore that slow motion train-wreck.
For me this wine will always be the bright spot in a dark day in history. Unlike election day that started out with promise and quickly deteriorated, the Masthead Sangiovese never let me down and continued to open up and reach new heights of flavor and complexity over the course of the evening.
What a brilliant idea it was to bring wine bloggers together to craft this wine.
UPDATE: While I tasted this almost a year ago it sometimes takes a jolt to get me to post to this blog and that jolt came by way of the recent news that Masthead received 90 points from Wine Enthusiast! I’d like to say you heard it here first that it was a worthy wine--but that’s what I get for procrastinating on this post!
In any event -- Cheers to Melanie Ofenloch of Dallas Wine Chick, Cindy Rynning, of Grape-Experiences and Peter Bourget and Nancy Brazil of Pull That Cork for a job well done.
You can read the full story of how the wine was created on their respective blogs via the links above.
File this post under #BetterLateThanNever
