Mystery Night

I had 6 bottles of wine from the same producer - two each of 3 varietals, different vintages. So, I thought it would be fun to brown bag the wines and taste them blindly, trying to see if we could pick out the correct varietal pairings. And, to confuse people and keep them "honest", I added a completely different wine as a "mystery wine" (different producer, varietal and continent).
Boy was it tough to pick the right pairings. It was however, very easy to pick the mystery wine and even it's origin and grape type. The Sophenia, Malbec 2005 from Tupungato, Mendoza, Argentina was so distinctive - it was the most aromatic of the lot, bright mulberries and spice on the nose. It was also the only purplish wine, was medium bodied on the palate with some rough tannins but very bright fruit. A "Good" wine, OK for $17.
The main event featured six wines from KWV's Cathedral Cellars. KWV is a huge South African winery and these wines are supposedly well crafted and see new oak. There were 2 Merlots (1999, 2002) that were thought to be the weakest wines of the bunch - beefy, meaty and tannic, but they opened up nicely the next day so definitely need decanting. The two cabs were quite different - the 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon I picked as a cab no problem but the 2002 Cab I thought was a spicy shiraz! So, obviously, I mis-picked one of the shiraz's as a cab (the 2002 Shiraz - an elegant, smooth, silky effort). The last wine was a 2000 Shiraz.
The best wine? It was a tie between the 2002 shiraz and cabernet...how do I know? those bottles were drained the fastest.
By the way, I rate them all "good".

Cheers!!

And thanks to all the tasters!!