I think that Block does not support a variable default tag. Instead any elements which are not tagged explicitely will be tagged as 1.
A possible solution is to setup the tag for the complete mesh. For instance if you have a Block mesh you can assign BoxRegion over the whole domain. For that you can addapt the following code:
(x, y, z) = (10, 10, 10)
default_tag = 0
geom = mesh.Block(size=(x, y, z), resolution=1.)
initial = mesh.BoxRegion(lowerleft=(-x/2,-y/2.,-z/2.), upperright=(x/2,y/2,z/2), tag=default_tag)
geom.add_region(initial)
Just make sure to add all your region before adding the initial region, otherwise the initial region will take precedence (so it will be the only region in the mesh).