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It’s finally time. After a few weeks of build-up, announcements of the brackets, some trash talking and a whole lot of wine tasting, the results of the first round are in - and as you can see, Bobby Knight is up in arms about it!

For today’s results, I’ll be focusing on the bracket of 4 that included York Creek, Castle Rock, Block No. 45 and Quail Creek. A brief reminder of how I got to the choices and what I thought going in:

1st vs. 4th seed

• 1st Seed ($12 - $20): 2006 York Creek Vineyards Red Wine: this is my North Carolina, my undisputed top seed. No buzzer beater here...either it wins big or it loses to a Cinderella.
• 4th Seed (under $5): Quail Creek 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon: no option on this one as Quail Creek is the only wine I could find at Whole Foods under $5. My true underdog, most likely to win only on a day when it's playing out of its brain and the other team can't seem to do anything right...

2nd vs. 3rd seed

• 2nd Seed ($8 - $12): 2007 Castle Rock Pinot Noir Monterey County: A lot of hype around this one. This is my dark horse and I have high expectations for how far it can go.
• 3rd Seed ($5 - $8): 2006 Block No. 45 Petite Sirah: Tasted the Block No. 45 Pinot Noir as part of the Whole Foods Holiday Top 10 and really liked it, so jumped at the chance to try another one for Grape Madness. This is my Gonzaga - tons of heart, comes in undervalued and has a great track record of taking down some heavies.
  

Going into the tasting, I thought for sure the York Creek would advance to the next round. Not necessarily because of price, but because I had heard enough about it that I figured the quality could stand up. I expected it to beat out the Castle Rock Pinot Noir in a tight match-up. Block No. 45 had a chance, but a $7 Petite Sirah is a risky bet (unless you’re Bogle) and the Quail Creek I knew didn’t have enough firepower to put up a fight, even in the first round.

So, where did I end up? Honestly, about where I expected. Tasting the first four, I was able to eliminate two wines pretty quickly – the Quail Creek with a score of 84 (which was a higher rating than I thought it would get) and the Block No. 45 with a score of 85 points. Decent enough these two wines, but they both lacked any real life or imagination. The York Creek and Castle Rock were clear winners in this round with scores of 88 and 89 and they'll be advancing to the next round to face off in what should be a close showdown.

For me, I went 2 for 2 in this first round and feeling pretty good about my York Creek pick...stay tuned to find out which one of the two advance to the Great Eight...results will be posted on Saturday, March 21st.

What did you pick? Comment at the top of the post...