October’s Vino Magnifico 2023

My schedule can be very erratic at times, causing me to be on the road, away from wine tastings. This past week I was fortunate enough to make V Paul’s once-a-month Vino Magnifico wine tasting. Vino Magnifico is different from the rest of our regularly scheduled tastings. For those who haven’t been V Paul’s requires a reservation. You arrive and sit down, either with friends or other adventurous wine tasters. Then wine is brought to you while you get brief description of what you are having. Basically the opposite of the other tastings.  There are pros and cons to the different wine tasting styles, which is a later topic.As every wine event I attend becomes a de-facto social experiment, Vino Magnifico is a fruitful affair! I often get to speak to wine tasters who don’t attend any of the other tastings, giving both sides a chance to share perspectives. I really enjoy watching others try new wine and then watching, and sometimes hearing their reaction. I then like to ask them why they liked, or didn’t like, a certain wine and I am always fascinated by their answers.Those answers are often all over the place as certain people like to try and sound more sophisticated than they really are instead of just being genuine and honest. The current result of my on going social wine tasting experiment is that you can 100% tell, on one hand, who is being genuine, and on the other, who wants to cover their insecurities with sophisticated nonsense.Well, at least everyone could agree on what was tonight’s Crowd Favorite: Villa Antinori Toscana Bianco 2021. This is a classic Porch Pounder, as certain people call it. It was refreshing with just the right amount of acid blended with citrus fruit notes and some back ground minerality. I was asked if it was too late in the season to buy this kind of wine since summer seems to finally be over. My response: “There is no season where you cannot buy any wine that you enjoy!”