The virtual 4-bottle Sancerre tasting was a great success! Sancerre is Sauvignon Blanc from the Loire Valley in France, see the link below to David Gandara’s presentation from the tasting for more info.
Here is the ranking and description of the wines:
A Sancerre Presentation (PDF) was provided by David Gandara who is a big fan of Sancerre (he’s also visited the village).
At least 30 couples or singles joined the Zoom call which may be a record. A very informative discussion of the tasters’ impressions was led by Bette Felton and it was wonderful to hear opinions from so many people.
We believe this was the first tasting in the 50 year history of the Cellar Society where the wines were purchased by the individual tasters rather than by the tasting host; therefore, this was not a blind tasting. The wines were selected by David Gandara and were available from Trader Joe’s (TJ’s) and BevMo.
All of the wines were very good and, for some of the tasters, the ranking was based on which Sauvignon Blanc style they preferred rather than how good the wines were.
The tasting results are listed in the table below. It is interesting to note that only a 5 point spread separates the 1st and 4th place wines which means the point differences are statistically insignificant; there was no clear winner or loser. All 4 wines received either 5, 6 or 7 1st place votes. A total of 24 tasters voted. Some tasters did not vote because they tasted a different vintage of one of the wines. (The ranking has changed since it was announced during the call because one more person voted. The 1st and 2nd place wines swapped places and the point spread tightened by 2 points. Also, both the 1st and 2nd place wines received the same number of points and the winner was determined by how many 1st place votes it received.)
Here are the rankings from each of the tasters:
Here is a photo of the bottles ordered 1st place to 4th place:
Cellar Society of San Francisco 