Sunday dawned rainy in a drought-stricken Barcelona. Probably, no one in the Mediterranean likes to participate in a contest with a gray sky that can easily be taken as a bad omen. But the comments of the participants at the reception of the XVI Couples Tasting Award from the Vila Viniteca distributor went in the opposite direction: "Let it rain!" "Let it keep raining! The vineyards need it and we all need it."
The rain celebration and warm initial greetings were soon followed by the first signs of typical pre-competition nerves. Or more, if possible. Because this blind wine tasting contest is the most recognized and best-endowed in Europe: the winners would take home 30,000, 7,000 and 3,000 euros respectively, and the 10 classified in the final round would receive a batch of wines each. . Thus, it is not surprising to find participants from all over the world. Nor did I find it strange that my tasting partner, Pilar Cavero (best sommelier in Spain in 2013), burst into laughter every few minutes during the previous minutes: it was the adrenaline that would later lead us to the concentration necessary to face the 7 liquid riddles that were proposed to us that morning. Of all of them, we indicate country (1 point), zone (1), D.O. (1), grapes (3), vintage (3), winery (1) and brand (1).
The contest generates expectation: only the 120 fastest couples with the keyboard and the pointer manage to fill out the registrations, which fill their places faster every year; In 2024, they disappeared in just over 3 minutes. Of those 120 couples, only the 10 with the highest scores will make it to the final, where they will once again have to taste another 7 wines but, this time, in just 1 hour. Quim Vila, co-owner of the distributor with Siscu Martí, acts as the perfect master of ceremonies and deftly guides the hours, promptly warning of the advance of the minute hand.
As in any competition, the key is training. Santi Rivas, expert wine taster and disseminator, third place in the IX edition of this competition along with Jaime Fernández, calls exactly this the practice sessions that several tasting couples carry out throughout the year in which they recreate the conditions of the wine. contest: training. He is right, since guessing a wine is a kind of mental gymnastics where the capacity for sensory analysis and good memory are combined. Of course, our tasting couple also immersed themselves as much as they could in such exercises. To all the sommeliers who have had the patience to serve us the wines blindly: thank you!
The wines tasted and the hours of discussion to decipher the contents of countless glasses not only made us know more about grape varieties and wine styles, but also strengthened our friendship. I believe that you can only taste well as a duo if you know your tasting partner well, their vices and virtues, their weaknesses and their strengths, how their reasoning works, what wines they have tasted or have been impressed by in the most literal sense. of the word, that is, those who have left a mark in their memory. Thus, the usual conversations about life were joined by a series of frequently asked questions such as “what have you drunk?” or “how was that wine?”
The night before the contest we didn't need to ask ourselves. By tradition, different tasting couples meet to taste blindly in a relaxed manner while eating dinner and remind each other of the details of the competition, such as putting the number assigned to the couple on the envelope and on all the sheets, which is not valid. write incoherencies to earn points, because that nullifies the entire exercise, or the eternal question of whether or not one should eat, brush one's teeth, or drink coffee in the morning so as not to cloud one's palate. Surprisingly, the entrance to Casa Llotja de Mar, at 9:15 in the morning, had several smokers sipping tobacco smoke, perhaps to calm their nerves.
There are different moments of special tension in the contest, and one of them is the following. After reading the rules of the competition by the president of the jury table, Fernando Gurucharri, President of the Spanish Union of Tasters, the wines enter through one of the large doors of the imposing Contracting Hall. A long line of waiters and sommeliers walk at an agile pace, as if they were not carrying half a dozen glasses of wine on the tray. In total, they will distribute 2,400 glasses throughout the contest, and one seems to see a choreography in their rhythmic movements and although the silence is such that only their footsteps echo on the checkered floor, the scene is so cinematic that in my imagination I practically hear Vivaldi's Spring.
“Alea iacta est!”, we said to ourselves, quietly, in unison, while the first glass of red arrived, something that caused different murmurs in the room. And we started with the first wine, which we located easily, but we missed its name and surname. Palacios Remondo Property 2021, Rioja, they would tell us later. With the second, inspiration flows just as well: the aromas and flavors of a Ribera del Duero throb in our memory, and so it was, because it was Dominio del Águila Reserva 2016. “I can't believe it's being so easy. What if we are doing everything wrong?” Pilar Cavero hesitates, scared. “When we're done with everyone, we'll go over them again,” I tell him.
The following glasses confused us a little: we hesitated between Champagne and Cava, and it was Louis Roederer 2015, we failed to appreciate the weak bubbles of the Corpinnat Bufadors Vinya del Rascarà 2017; the Malvasía 2018 from Riojan by Abel Mendoza, a winemaker who was also competing that day, took us to Rueda, and in reality there was Ossian 2021, from Castilla y León, which, due to its intense perfume of fresh roses, made us fly much further. The smoke got between our taste buds with the last wine, and we didn't doubt it: they were like volcanic vapors and that was a Sicilian wine. But what grape varieties are there in Sicily? I remembered the catarratto and nothing else, and I regretted not having studied the island's wines in depth. When the wines were discovered, three hours later, the enigma was solved: the Cos Pithos Bianco 2022 from Azienda Agricola Cos Pithos Bianco 2022 was Grecanico.
After delivering the envelopes, hypotheses and speculations dominated the conversations. And also an issue that became evident: the long lines in the men's bathroom made it clear that today participation in the contest is still immensely male, and that couples of two female tasters are even less common. Because? There are social and cultural factors that lead us to undervalue ourselves, to think that we do not know enough to pass a test; On the other hand, different studies show that in the male case there is the opposite tendency, which is to think that one knows more than what he knows, without knowing it. On the other hand, my tasting partner, who has two small children, observes that, unfortunately, the structures do not yet exist to support a woman meeting every Sunday for hours to taste wines. “I see it with Sunday cyclists,” I tell him: “they hit the road or the mountain in search of slopes, stop to eat sumptuously, and disappear for a good part of the day. At home, care usually falls on them on holidays, while they turn their hobby into an obligation and priority.”
We didn't do badly, but at least 10 other couples did better than us, and we didn't qualify for the final, where the La Vanguardia wine journalist, Ramon Francàs, did arrive with his tasting partner, Arnau Vivó. Juan Munné and Àlex Peris, Paulius Gudinavicuus and Valeria Valdebenito, Roc Gramona and Ricard Rofes, Daniel Monsonís and Juan Luis Vanrell, Agustí Torelló and Eloi Jiménez, Fernando Mora and Aiyana Vilimek, Josep Gallego and David Carril, David Villalón and Delia also did so. Baeza and Antoni Carbó and Ramón Jané. It was precisely these last three couples that made it to the podium after guessing: Château Musar White 2016 (Lebanon), Georges Vernay Coteau de Vernon 2018 (Condrieu), Charles Heidsieck Blanc des Millénaires 2007 (Champagne), Joan d'Anguera Finca L'Argatà 2020 (Montsant), Mauro 2010, (Castilla y León), Zuccardi Finca Piedra Infinita Supercal 2019 (Valle de Uco) and Valdespino Moscatel Toneles Viejísimo 3/8 (Jerez).
But the day didn't end here. On this glorious day organized with infinite generosity by Vila Viniteca, Casa Llotja de Mar not only hosted the tasting competition, but every corner of the building was dotted with a total of 67 winemakers offering their wines. Towards the afternoon, the Consuls' Hall, located on the upper floor, would give off an intense, easily identifiable and appetizing aroma, since the spectacular cheese buffet was located there, where the participants of the tasting and anyone who had obtained a ticket (€30) I could try the 112 varieties and the 716 kg of cheese that were being cut and served with extreme friendliness and professionalism.
After having attended as an audience, having written about it, and now finally as a contestant, I have no doubt that the Vila Viniteca Blind Pairs Tasting Award is more than a contest: it is a great gastronomic festival, a day that many have marked on the calendar every year as an unmissable event in which, thanks to perfect logistics, the passion for wine, the sense of sportsmanship and, above all, the desire to improve oneself reign, something that, like the wine, reminds us that we are human.
