Malta Wine Tasting Team

The Team is back with a cracking tasting. Seven members and Petros Skarmoutsos MC in the house! Farsonsdirect sponsored an absolutely stellar 🍷lineup🍷of wines, with legendary-level producers such as Egon Müller and Chateau Grillet plus benchmarks like La Spinetta for Barbaresco, Quinta do Noval for Douro, Roda for Rioja, Shafer for Napa, Brancaia for Chianti, Berlucchi for Franciacorta, Royal Tokaij, Norton for Mendoza, Faiveley for Marsannay and Chavy Chouet for Meursault. What a treat! We started strong, nailing the Franciacorta, the Mosel Riesling and the white Rioja. The amazing Grillet and the Meursault were just too good to focus on scoring. Among the reds we got the Malbec and the Napa but we scored some points in other wines too. A respectable total of 113 points with 10 rated wines. We called the Barbaresco a Xinomavro probably as a nod to Petros- but we were so wrong! Team favourites: all of them really. The Riesling, the Grillet and the Touriga are just insanely good.
The team at this tasting: Aaron Rizzo Andrea Bomboklan Marco Trucco Manuel DegiorgioPierre Finger Matthew Delicata Rebecca Degaetano. Let’s go to the Championnat du monde de dégustation La RVF and always Visit Malta!

The Malta National Tasting Team is back! We restarted our training for the Championnat du monde de dégustation La RVF 2026 edition which will take place in the Palace of the Popes in Avignon. We thank Visit Malta for the support of our mission to represent Malta’s passion for wine abroad. And we welcome a new wine sponsor Dical House Dominic Calleja who hosted our tasting and offered a super 🍷lineup🍷. How did we do? Well… let’s call it a “recalibration session”… When you miss a Riesling and an Amarone it’s always a bit of an embarrassment. But, to our partial excuse, many wines were atypical (and in a nice way). Team favourites were the excellent Gavi from Marrone which we missed because “it’s too good to be a Gavi!” and the elegant, balanced and modern Amarone from Villa San Paolo, which we missed because it had none of the heavy, alcoholic traits of common Amarones. Two great bottles in the portfolio of Dical. The team on this tasting: Pierre FingerAndrea Bomboklan Manuel DegiorgioAaron RizzoRebecca Degaetano Marco Trucco.

So… from 29th position last year to 12th (out of 43) this time, with one of the highest score on reds! Malta is now a serious contender for the title of the World Blind Tasting Championship. How does it feel? Sweet and sour because we missed some of the easiest wines and guessed what most teams missed. A top10 position was possible!
Here’s a breakdown of our points:
1. Vintage Champagne - 5
2 Verdejo 🇪🇸 Rueda 2022 - 3
3. Chardonnay 🇦🇺 Margaret River 2022 - 0
4. Riesling 🇸🇰 Muzla 2020 - 10
5. Pinotage 🇿🇦 Stellenbosch 2021 - 23
6. Pinot Noir 🇺🇸 Santa Ynez 2020 - 0
7. Tempranillo 🇪🇸 Rioja 2022 - 20
8. Touriga Nacional 🇵🇹 Douro 2019 - 0
9. GSM 30% 🇫🇷 Châteauneuf-du-P 2017 - 12
10. Corvina 35% 🇮🇹 Amarone 2018 - 5
11. Riesling 🇩🇪 Rheingau 2021 Spatlese - 15
12. Furmint Harslevelu 🇭🇺 Tokaj - 3

Some wines were super tough. The oaked verdejo and the touriga were so unusual that even the Spanish and Portuguese missed them. The aussie chard, the american pinot and the vintage champagne were our biggest misses. We probably overthought a bit. On the other hand, we were one of the few teams right on the money with the Tempranillo and the Pinotage.
Next year it’s Avignon and the Chateauneuf du Pape! Will the Maltese team keep climbing the leaderboard? We have have many months ahead to prepare, and with the support of Visit Malta and the Malta wine trade will definitely do so. Championnat du monde de dégustation La RVF The 2025: Marco TruccoMatthew DelicataRebecca DegaetanoPierre FingerAndrea Bomboklan.

Final result: 12th!!! We played to win with some wild bets that didn’t pay off but we’re SUPER happy with the result. let’s celebrate and we’ll post the detailed result. Thanks for watching the stream!!

Ready!

The stream link: https://vimeo.com/event/2391437/f221a9976f We’re going to start soon!

Exploring the exceptional Jura wines today. The Team is on the move! First, the Domaine Henri Maire in Arbois, from the Crémant to the Savagnin, Chardonnay, Poulsard,Pinot N,Troussard and the Macvin from the vats. A tecnical visit with Jacques, the winemaker of an impressive variety of wines, some of those available at Farsonsdirect Then the small,artisanal Domaine Berthet-Bondet in Chateau Chalon, with a beautiful traditional Savagnin (oxidized), one unusually aged in acacia barrels and two Vin Jaunes, one from 2017 and a secret bottle from 1997. The power of those wines!

How to watch the Championnat du monde de dégustation La RVF the blind tasting world championship where we compete as the Malta National Team?
A free live stream will be available at this address: https://vimeo.com/event/2391437/f221a9976f and the competition starts on Saturday Oct. 4th at 9am.
It will last about 3 hours.

Join the stream, we’ll comment live on this page and post our reactions during the event. Will we improve last year’s placement? Bets are on!

Last training of the team before the Championnat du monde de dégustation La RVF next Saturday!

M&Z plc offered a challenging 🍷lineup🍷 for our tastebuds. We started off with two impossible-to-guess whites: a Pecorino and a Portuguese Gouveio. We say impossible to guess because these grape varieties are extremely unlikely to be at the competition and so we wouldn’t call them even if we saw the label! But very useful to taste nonetheless. We nailed the typical ones: the Sauvignon B, the Chards, the Cotes du Rhone and the Aussie Shiraz. Team favourite: the extremely sharp Gouveio, which we called a CheninB, and the very fragrant Cotes du Rhone. Glad to see that our training tasting sessions are also a useful tool for our sponsors to evaluate and discuss new wines to bring to Malta!
The tasting team this week :Matthew Delicata Rebecca Degaetano Manuel Degiorgio Marco Trucco Pierre Finger

Sooo our new friends at M&Z plc prepared for us a monster 🍷lineup🍷. I’d challenge Rajat Parr or Pascaline Lepeltier to guess blind a… Meksassi grape from Lebanon! But also the sparkling from Greco, the Lugana and the CabFranc from Collio were no joke. We made precious points with the South African wine, the German Riesling, the Italian reds, the Chilean, and -yes- we guessed the Touriga Franca (from Lebanon !?!). Super valuable lessons here. Team favourite: the exceptional Lugana. Championnat du monde de dégustation La RVF The team this time: Andrea BomboklanMarco TruccoManuel DegiorgioRebecca Degaetano