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Following Wines Til Sold Out: October’s Full-On Marathon
121 wines (if my count is correct) during 18 hours, lots of 90+ wines, including 95-99 rated, great names (Joseph Phelps, Dominus, Antinori Solaia, Tattinger and many others) – “wow” is the only descriptor I can use here. Some (quite a few) of the wines lasted only 3 minutes – “you snooze, you lose” was in the full effect.
The event took place on Tuesday, October 2nd. As before, I did my best to collect the data, which is always challenging. Below is the table containing all (hopefully) wines offered during the event.
Guide to ratings: WS – Wine Spectator, WA – Wine Advocate, WE – Wine Enthusiast, W&S – Wine & Spirits, ST – Steven Tanzer, JHN – Jonathan H. Newman, WRO – Wine Review Online, RP – Robert Parker, JS – James Suckling, BH – Bourghound, IWC – International Wine Cellars, CG – Consumer Guide, IWR -International Wine Review, TWN – The Wine News.
Enjoy!
Wednesday’s Meritage – Wine Quiz Answer, #GrenacheDay, #ChampagneDay, WTSO Full-On and more

Meritage Time!
So, what do you think of Wine Quiz #29, A Guessing Game? I now understand that I goofed up with my logic (not the first time; sigh) and the way second question was asked implied the answer for the first – so I definitely have a room for improvement. I still hope it was fun, and – we have a winner!
Both reviews included into the post were for the same wine, 2001 La Rioja Alta Vina Ardanza Reserva Especial – the first one was written by Robert Parker, and second was Stephen Tanzer’s review. And the winners are (drumroll, please) whineandcheersforwine and thedrunkencyclist – both were able to correctly answer all three questions including the bonus part. Well done! As a side note, this is one of the best Rioja wines you can find for the money – it will cost you between $25 and $30, it drinks perfectly now, and will be for the next 20-30 years.
And now let’s move on to the interesting news section.
On October 2nd, the greatest purveyor of the QPR wines, Wine Til Sold Out, says “Make room in your cellars”, and I say “hold on to your wallets” – Full-On Marathon is coming. Starting at 6 AM Eastern time, WTSO will be offering wines staring from $15.99 and going all the way into the hundreds of dollars. The event will end at midnight on the same day. Knowing WTSO, this will be one amazing event which will put your family finances in a grave danger – but if anything, it will be fun to watch!
I almost missed it (changing the post after it was out) – International #GrenacheDay is coming on Friday, September 21st! There is not much time left – find that Grenache bottle and get ready to celebrate!
Champagne lovers, your special day is coming! 3rd annual #ChampagneDay will be celebrated through all social media outlets on October 25th – you can find your invitation here. You have enough time to be well prepared – start thinking about that special bottle.
There is an interesting debate going in regarding the actual state of the wine blogging – best of the best are trying to figure out if it is dead or alive (as I’m writing this post, I would consider it quite alive, but what do I know…). Here are couple of viewpoints: Joe Roberts, a.k.a. 1WineDude, and Steve Heimoff. If you have an opinion – write a blog post, join the debate!
Last but not least, St. Emilion region in Bordeaux has a new classification – you can read more about it here in Dr. Vino’s blog post.
We are done here – the glass is empty – for the moment, of course. Cheers!