NMD is short for ‘no more details’ and is the game we played with the early releases of the Barbarossa. The name Barbarossa and knowledge that it was 100% Barossa Valley was all customers were told. A real guessing game. For this release the district, the vintage and the varieties are on the label.
How you perceive the taste of a wine is far from simple and knowing what to expect alters your response. This is why masked tastings are so valuable in tuning up your drinking judgements. For example, the second release was from 2016 and was Mataro dominant and very difficult to guess. Masked tests are also exhausting and my long experience with guessing games while useful in the professional sense were so wasteful. Concentrating on whether the old wine was a Clare or Eden Valley left no time to enjoy the glass.
So, no guessing games with this release of the ‘mythical red beard of Barbarossa’ that descends from the Kaiser Stuhl to haunt children though he will return.
