Whoa, I'm not sure what's got Porter Moser all fired up, but he clearly doesn't like what's happened in this round of Grape Madness.

Let’s recap the action to date. 4 stores. 32 wines, narrowed down to 16, then 8 and now 4…the Final Four of Grape Madness!

For the Whole Foods bracket, the Elite Eight came down to the 2006 Stephen Vincent Crimson Red and the 2007 Castle Rock Pinot Noir Monterey County. After a little back and forth at the beginning of the game, the Stephen Vincent came out strong in the 2nd half and defeated the Castle Rock soundly with a score of 88 – 85. In the Trader Joe’s bracket, it was between the 2004 Chateau Chevalier Napa Spring Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon and the 2006 Rosenblum Paso Robles Zinfandel. Final score on the match-up - Chateau Chevalier 90, Rosenblum 86, with Chevalier gaining an early lead that they never lost.

Which brings us to the first of our two Final Four games of the weekend…the 2006 Stephen Vincent Crimson Red vs. the 2004 Chateau Chevalier Napa Spring Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon.

I’ll be honest – I was leaning toward the Chevalier going into this round, so it was probably good to do a blind tasting, as it allowed me to take as much of that bias out of the game today. That said, the Stephen Vincent did come to play and showed the Chevalier early on that it shouldn’t take it's top-seed for granted. Like the last round, this was an old school team, one that passed well, played for each other and never teased the other guy about how short his shorts were. Very consistent on the nose with lost of strawberry, licorice and menthol, followed by a little more cherry this time than last, as well as the strawberry and spice. Overall, a great showing by a consistently good wine.

But, in the end, the Vincent just wasn’t good enough. I wouldn’t say this was like watching the Globetrotters pants the Washington Generals (who have now lost more than 13,000 games to their long-time and far-funnier opponents), but it was pretty close. The first half saw Chevalier just warming up, sinking shots from way out, feeding the lane well and hitting most of their free throws. Then at halftime, I don’t know what happened, but the Chevalier must have gotten a talking to because it came out with no option but to win. The berries, anise and cedar were all welcome members of the team, joined by very dark cherries and a hell of a shooter in the chalky finish. Again, I found this to be a very well balanced, tasty wine for $15.

A bit of a boring match-up, really…a few runs by Vincent in the first half, but the Chevalier was just too much for it, winning soundly 90 - 86. The Chevalier had more nose, more balance, a better finish and, in the end, just more life. It came out of this match-up as my favorite of the first 16 wines from the Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods brackets.

So, one team championship team decided, with one more still be figured out in tomorrow’s game between the Talus Pinot Noir and the Norton Bodega Malbec. Stay tuned tomorrow for the results of that match-up and then we’ll announce the winner of it all on Monday night. Any guesses?

Back to Porter...clearly a Stephen Vincent fan...