Happy Wine Wednesday! This week I’m on spring break from the charter school where I teach art and cooking classes at a few days a week, which is reason to celebrate with a special occasion wine. In about an hour I’m going to take a gorgeous drive down the coast from Santa Barbara to Malibu, to drop off some cupcakes and cupcake wrappers for a wedding at The Sunset Restaurant. With that said, I’m feeling quite glitzy and a little impulsive, like I could just stay down in Malibu and drink $50 bottles of amazing wine in the sun all day and never come back. This Black Bart Syrah by Krupp Brothers is exactly the sort of luxurious wine you want to bring out for such an occasion, when you just want to indulge in a bottle of wine you know is going to be fantastic.

So what was the occasion in which I tried this Syrah? A little while ago, when I lived with my former roommate, Cupcake Wars baking assistant, and electrical engineering Ph.D GRADUATE, Erica, we decided to host a blind wine tasting for just three wines. A bottle less than $10, a bottle around $25, and a $50 bottle of wine. We invited lots of friends over, and of course, put paper bags over the wines and mixed them up so no one knew which one was which. Side note, The Sunday Sparkle is excited to announce that we will be hosting another one of these blind wine tasting parties in the near future, so there will be lots of party ideas and inspiration to come soon!

With a range of three wines so different in price, most people found it fairly easy to distinguish which was which. That is not to say that the more expensive a bottle of wine is, the better it will be, but in this situation, it just happened to be the case! I think it was because the bottle less than $10 was a two-buck chuck from Trader Joe’s, which most people are familiar with, whether they want to admit it or not! For the other two wines, I went shopping at The Winehound, a cute little wine shop in Santa Barbara that also hosts wine tasting nights around town a few times a month. Truth be told, I don’t even remember what the $25 bottle was, but maybe it’s because the Black Bart Syrah stood out so much! It was just so silky and smooth, starting out a little cinnamony and spicy, then finishing with notes of dark fruits.  The grapes for this wine come from Stagecoach Vineyard in Napa Valley, which is known for their intensely colored Syrah grapes. It makes sense because this wine was so bold and rich in color. According to a review in July 2008, the Black Bart Syrah should evolve for about five years for peak enjoyment, and by my calculations, that’s coming up soon. I recommend that everyone buy a bottle right this minute and save it for next year, when it should be at its best. Check out WineFolder because now you can actually find it on sale! With that said, time to get on the road to Malibu, and unfortunately I don’t have a bottle of the Black Bart Syrah to take with me, so I’ll probably be returning home tonight. Happy Wine Wednesday from The Sunday Sparkle!