One Round Battle: New Zealand

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty biased. And knowing that about myself, I tend to assume everyone else is biased too. That goes both ways - positive and negative.

Take that SJP bottle - the one from Marlborough, made in collaboration with Sarah Jessica Parker. I'd had it pitched to me a few times, and every time I looked at it with the same side-eye. A big-name celeb, glossy label, heavy branding - it rarely signals a wine made for drinking rather than selling.

But those are my biases. And the folks at Winetime have theirs - they've tasted it, and they get feedback from customers. So when the wine came up again, I thought - why not test it blind? The best way to short-circuit a bias is to take the label out of the equation.

I suggested we pair it with something more from New Zealand in the same price range - a natural side-by-side. But it still felt like the tasting needed a little kick. So I reached for La Bruja 2023 - that Pinot-y Garnacha from Gredos I've already bored half of Kyiv with (but not yet Ivano-Frankivsk).

Sadly, I couldn't taste blind myself, but everyone else could. The idea was to start with La Bruja - something mineral, light, energetic, just to throw people off their footing. Then move to the SJP, which might technically make more sense as a first pour, but worked far better as a mid-point. Especially with all that talk of "12 months in oak" - you want to hear how it speaks next to the structure of a proper Pinot Noir from Burn Cottage.

The result? Genuinely satisfying. People were properly confused, which is always a good sign in my book. And yes, the SJP didn't win (you can see that on the scorecard).

No surprise, really. It's a textbook case of celebrity gloss making the most out of very little. A wine built to please everyone, but also to excite no one. And when you're drinking it next to La Bruja - a wine with character - and Burn Cottage - a wine with depth and vine work behind it - well, the SJP starts tasting like a compromise.

Especially painful when it's priced like an actual artisan bottle.

Comando G might be mainstream in natural circles now, sure. But their wines still have soul. Even when they lean a bit too "easy", they carry a sense of place, wildness, energy - things you don't get by throwing money at the problem.

So yeah, the tasting turned out great. And of course, we didn't stop there - we kept going. There was a Crémant from Jura, and even a gorgeous bottle from Lebanon - a nod to that sneaky, blind Lebanese wine Volodymyr (one of the attendees) served us not too long ago.

Any lessons?

Just get people together and drink wine. That's always the hard part - wrangling people. Everyone's busy, everyone's got plans. But in the end, that's the whole point: to be together, to drink, to discover flavour, and expand some horizons - including your own.