This is actually the first Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Moby and I ever had and it was one of the wines that got us started at Vin Bin. This is actually the third time we’ve had this wine but the first time we didn’t have a website yet and the second time we had a bunch of guests over and simply forgot so now it’s time for a proper review.  I decided it would be fun to see if Moby could recognize it since we’ve had it before as a blind wine but I’ll tell you what, blind wines are hard. She got Italy so I’ll say that’s pretty darn good for a first blind wine. Our relatives Superstorm and UncleGrape are the true blind wine masters…we both have lots of work to do. And by work I mean drink wine and have lots of fun.

This is a relatively expensive Montepulciano d’Abruzzo at $33 but I got it on sale for $25 x 4 bottles. You do get what you pay for often times though if you know what you’re buying and this holds true with this wine. Our friend Mitchell and I agree that this is the best Montepulciano we’ve ever had. We had simple leftover baked ziti and garlic bread with this bottle.

colonelgrape: 93. This is a rustic and robust bottle of wine. It’s something I’d recommend decanting as the first few sips of un-decanted wine were definitely a bit too strong. It settled down after about 15 minutes and it’s a beautiful ruby color. On the palate it’s very interesting with tastes of anise and leather to go along with classic dark fruit tastes. Compared to other Montepulciano’s I’ve had this is the cream of the crop. You can tell you’re drinking an Italian wine as Moby did in the blind wine challenge. This is another Italian red you could bring to a California wine drinker’s home/party and wow everyone with. Eat this with classic rustic/hearty Italian food and you’ll be in for a treat.

MobyGrape: 85.  I failed miserably at my first real blind taste test (I’m not sure why we thought it was a good idea in the first place).  Sniffing at it didn’t reveal anything special, I thought it was something maybe on the younger side but that was all I could put together.  The first few sips of this had an incredibly strong astringent feeling, like when you’ve eaten too much Cap’n Crunch and the roof of your mouth is all torn up, it was like that feeling but not painful.  Once this wine settled down though, it smoothed out nicely.  Tasted fruitier, I picked up some anise flavor (it wasn’t overbearing), the astringent/tannin effects all but went away and it had a decent lingering finish to round it out.