Excavating In My Wine Cellar

Wine 14

2008-08-10T14:35:00.002-05:00

"Memories. Sweetened through the ages just like wine."
Let me tell you, this lyric was probably written by someone who hadn't had a lot of old wine, and certainly was intended for an audience who hadn't.
As wine ages, sugars are still being converted just like they were when the yeasts were at their peak. Wines become different over time, but they famously do not sweeten. Not that that's all bad.
Today's selection was, in fact, my wedding wine, but two vintages later. This wine is not very old, for which I would apologize, but I needed two weeks of ringers after lucky 13 set me on hiatus. In my defense, two years is still twice as long as a Muscat generally ought to age in your cellar, really.
It was a beautiful ceremony.
A friend of my family, one who shares a surname with a former Most Famous English Writer of All Time, performed the ceremony. He wore a priest's dog collar with a tiny little longbow strung through it, because he loves puns. This alone would have made him the right choice, and it wasn't even his best qualification.
He was ordained through the Internet, through the authority of which august body we were joined before Friend and Family alike, and felt nervous about being the officiant of our wedding. He has an overarching sense of the appropriate, which also made him a fine choice.
When the ceremony was over, he and his wife and children partook of cake, then snuck away before the party began in earnest. He understood that the minster must maintain dignity, even if he questions it himself, a point upon which I agree, even if he doesn't. He might just have felt uncomfortable in the role of priest. I couldn't really say.
We had cake and we had wine.
My bride and I picked the wine based upon a previous exposure to it. We stayed at a B&B in Stonewall at which the proprietor stringently suggested that we partake, and as we stumbled back to the room we resolved to visit the source of this ambrosia. We did so, driving most of an afternoon there and back, and were immediately impressed. Sister Creek is a no-nonsense group and they produce a uniformly high-quality product.
Their muscat is slightly carbonated, a quality which increases as the wine ages, and this year took on a wonderfully viscous mouth feel. The flavor was undimmed, but had taken on strong notes of the peaches for which the area around Sisterdale is famous, and the sugars had softened as the carbonation strengthened. This wine, once a crisp allegro, has mellowed to a quiet nocturne, and gained a contemplative side which is so wonderfully expressed by muscat at its peak.
Like our wedding, I wouldn't say that this wine has sweetened through time, but it has become more interesting, and isn't that more important that sweetness, in the end?
OK, maybe I shouldn't be so mean to Bill Strange and Scott Davis, but they did, in fact, get this detail wrong. I know, poetic license and all that. It's an intro. It got you into and out of thinking about the wine. What do you want from me?

Wine 13

2008-07-06T13:37:00.005-05:00

I've made a couple of stabs at bottling. Stabs, we all know, produce blood and sadness.
This is one of my first, and wasn't a terrible attempt. The grapes grew at my house. I would take the credit for them, but the previous tenants seem to have planted them. I participated in the watering of them. My then-girlfriend and I fought off rats and sparrows, overcame drought and apathy, and more allowed than caused the grapes to grow. The vine grew up over the gate in our fence, a six-foot affair built in two levels as are so many around the neighborhood. This design, while being difficult to maintain, is the perfect place for local fauna to take up residence. For us, this included a large nest of rats and a couple of possums. I'll spare you the unfriendly details, except to say that we allowed the grapes to reach maturity in spite of their probable tastiness and Nature's love of tasty things.
Mustang grapes are a local varietal that grows more or less wild around here, but that is well-suited to the dry heat we get, as well as resistant to the mold which reproduces rampantly and grotesquely, performing unspeakable acts in full view of women and children. This makes the real trick to winemaking in this area killing the native growth.
We squeezed the grapes not 100 yards from the vine where they grew. I wish I could tell you that we stomped them while wearing festive and amusing costume in the style of the Italian peasantry, but we squeezed them cruelly by hand, holding them over a sieve and trying to keep out the stems and seeds.
As soon as the vines bore tiny, green pips, we began drinking apple juice. We picked a brand which came in thick glass jars with a gallon capacity, and drank the juice mechanically. From the very juicy grapes, we produced just over three half gallons of raw liquid, and began to ferment them with Champagne yeast. Over the course of weeks, the wine burbled and grew, and slowly became other than its initial stuff.
It became several bottles of wine. I made labels declaring the wine "Not Genuine With This Signature!" and we made up labels.
This bottle was the last one, pulled from the end of the tanks and having either loads of character or none at all.
And it has corked badly. Something truly unpleasant has happened to this poor grape juice, and I can't even bring myself to drink it. I have a second bottle which I will attempt at a later date.
While cleaning out some boxes in the garage, we found some bottles of "Flying Lemonade," a soft beverage bottled by my wife and me. Although I am a brave man, this is a raw beverage, bottled with the intent that it be consumed quickly. It was made with local lemons (which we cannot claim to have produced) and pure sugar. We brewed it with water from a spring from which flows the purest, tastiest water in North America.
I didn't even pull the cork on that one.
What does all this mean? I hope you will take from it that I really do appreciate the work which vintners put into winemaking. We labored for scant weeks. I've stabbed a couple of times at producing bottled beverages, and although not unsuccessful, the output has been paltry and the product amateurish. To make a uniform product over such a huge run must be difficult indeed.
I hope I'm not writing this to poke fun at any sort of wine maker. My goal, I really hope, is penance. I have done wrong to so many of these wines, and I hope to excise the skeletons by savoring the results.
'Bye!

Wine 12

2008-06-29T13:33:00.000-05:00

Breakfast is the best time for sagacity. Something about a little bone-colored mug of bottomless coffee and the promise of eggs and toast can bring out the best in a person. Maybe it's the sudden realization that you get to be alive for another day, and the symbolism of eating representing that on a very deep, visceral level. Maybe it's the emergence from sleep and the way that the magical reality can flavor a pancake. Maybe it's just that I surround myself with really smart people all the time.
I think that the greatest sages of the twentieth century will go largely unrecognized. Whereas Ginsberg and Chomsky, the Dalai Llama and the Pope, people will remember if only because they wrote down what they thought, some of the wisest people of the century chose not to write. Does that make them necessarily unwise? Of course not. It makes them exempt from recognition.
If the wise spent more time writing and less time living, they would be recognized by future generations, but they would also be less wise. Every word slapped onto paper, one of them said to me once, is an iota of smart you've lost. What he failed to realize, I think, is that writing is an essentially additive act, and that every word you write down is one you don't have to remember as hard next time.
On the other hand, I'm writing. In doing so, I'm demanding, although I hope not too loudly, recognition for my little piece of clever. Does that make me a bad person?
There's a question which has been a plague to thinkers for almost as long as there have been two thinkers.
“Well,” thinks the one who wishes he'd thought of that, “he's only doing it for the women. If I just wanted to be popular, I could think stuff like that, too. I'm doing this for nobler reasons, so I can live with the abject disapproval of my fellows. At least I'm not a bad person for wanting other people to think I'm smart.”
Meanwhile, the other thinker is thinking, “Wow! Women! This wins!”
I can't promise you which kind I am. I know that if I'm the first kind, I wish I were the second. If I am the second, I'm pretty awful at it, but I'm having a great time.
What does this have to do with a Cabernet Sauvignon?
Not a damn thing. This wine was bad. It tasted strongly of Cedar and Mold, the finish was all tannin, and the nose was fresh plastic and banana ester. Yuck. I'd rather think about thinking than think about this wine. It got spoiled through mistreatment. I ruined it. It's my fault.
Does that make me a bad person, or does being a bad person make me ruin wine?
Ponder on that. We'll grab breakfast some time and talk it over.

Wine 11

2008-06-22T13:32:00.000-05:00

As a great sage once told me over breakfast, one must keep moving or drown, so here I present the fruits of my latest dive into the shadowy depths of my wine cellar.
There are Rieslings which age well and there are Rieslings which turn suddenly and violently into bottles of pure, yellow evil. This one, through the vintners' skill or luck, was the former.
As pleasant as it was when fresh, the 1999 Dr L was a really wonderful surprise nine years later. I'm pretty sure I bought this one at a local supermarket chain, and I'm equally sure I paid fewer than ten dollars for it. I believe it was purchased in a crowd, with several bottles of the same vintage and probably something less respectable. For the moment, pretend it was not Blue Nun, so that I may retain whatever vestiges of credit I pretend to.
Like so many of the wines pulled bodily from my cellar, this one has become sour. It has, however, retained the flavors of oak and still, miraculously, grape. One seldom hears of a wine that tastes like grape, but this one is distinct and tasty. The Alcohol has not become overpowering, and the wine has taken on a viscous mouth feel characteristic of well-aged Riesling. I found the finish to be very crisp and pleasant, and the overall experience to be positive.
A winner! Or, from another point of view, one which fails to be unpleasant (and is therefore a loser)!
Next week: Horror!

Wine 10

2008-06-15T13:16:00.001-05:00

Sadly, I must say again, Ugh. This is another bad wine. I was, however, thrilled to discover that it is so for an entirely different reason. My first thought on its nose was honey, although D---, of my brave tasting crew, quickly identified the taste as Marsala. This wine has maintained plenty of character, and perhaps accrued extra in an attempt to make up for its sad, diminished neighbors. This is a thick, syrupy wine, with a heavy nose and plenty of fruit to go around.
It is a case, though, in which the fruit has mingled and combined into a robust and overbearing mix, not unlike a compost pile. I wouldn't compare this wine to a compost pile, of course, nor wine in general, although that is pretty apt, but that is rather the method I choose to describe the intermingling of flavors of this powerful red.
In another twist making this a peculiarity, the aroma of the wine carries over strongly into the flavor. This is, though, a very dry wine, and the tannins kick through everything eventually, overwhelming the entirety of the fruit and leaving only a mildly unpleasant tingle in the mouth as if one has just committed a tactical error which one is in imminent danger of expelling.
The company was good, though, and we enjoyed this wine floating in a swimming pool, hot and nearly exhausted after a long day of wasting time. We looked very hard at racing motorcycles. We ventured onto the World Wide Web via a crawly browser through a dial-up connection. We pondered the meaning of life even as we played a game of Marco Polo in the pool in which we now soaked. We drove little cars around very fast at sunset. A good time, I hope I am being clear, was had by all.
We wrapped up the day by sitting on a porch, looking out over pineapples and pine trees and strumming a banjo, singing mournful songs about java beans and the blissfully mercurial quality of love and loss.
Now I'm headed off tired to bed, ready for another long day performing my particularly important task within society, that of the tourist. All the best, and don't be shy: if a wine has turned to garbage, you needn't feel a pang about dumping it. Sometimes, down the drain is the place for a wine.

Wine 9

2008-06-08T13:14:00.000-05:00

As I have suggested previously, although never in print and never on this journal, I am en vacant at the moment, but my excursions into my cellar have churned up a worthy subject, one which I brought with me despite the inherent dangers.
Danger? you say. Well, naturally there are dangers in attempting to bring any sort of creature comfort away from home and bring it with you, and wine is sort of the worst-case scenario. When one's particular oenological obsession involves those of extreme age, one must be doubly careful.
I feel I owe it to this journal to make every effort to keep the wines as palatable as possible. If a wine is ruined by heat, what does that prove? The only interesting outcome of proper excavation within a cellar is for the wine to have become something entirely else, whether thought good or bad, on its own merits. It is a matter of seconds for wine to be ruined in an uncontrolled climate. Please keep this in mind as you travel this summer. If you bring your wine with you, it might be ruined. Buy local wines wherever you go. It's probably Greener, too, or something. Sorry, I'll back off my vague soapbox now and move on to the subject at hand.
As I have doubtless mentioned here, Rieslings are not to be kept. They do not survive well and they are one of the wines which will almost never gain anything of value over the course of time. This wine has proved that it is part of the larger crowd. As per my usual, I do not mean to cast aspersions on the wine itself and I do not doubt that, had it been used as the manufacturer intended, it would have produced a perfectly satisfactory culinary experience. As it stands, this has become a terrible wine.
The nose still has hints of fruit, and although the pineapple which is often cried as being present and delicious in such wines is certainly not actually detectable, my first reaction (and that of four of the six tasters at this event) was the distinct note of fresh paint. I have heard that some experts and particularians can refer to this as a lacquer note, but I, having applied both substances to several surfaces, can attest to this wine having developed the former, if it ever was home to the latter.
I thought I detected an apricot or other actual fruit overtone, but general consensus was that this was more imagination than sensitivity. The nose smelled of artificially flavored pineapple-named candy or gum, but not of the actual fruit. As the site of this tasting was some hundred feet from several actual pineapple plants, we had a point of reference and knew from which we spoke.
Upon actually putting this wine in my mouth, I suddenly joined the minority third who did not make a disgusted face. As seems so often the case with these over-aged wines, the flavor was unimpressively thin and lacked any form of nuance.
However, in the first moment of tasting, before the entirety of the wine had been exposed to air and my tongue had rejected the substance as best ignored, I am sure I tasted real, actual pineapple, sweet and juicy. The sensation was impressively short-lived and died away into sour blandness almost instantly.
This Riesling was a bit of a stinker, I admit. Wines of this character are the reason I started this journal, mostly by way of warning, to be quite honest. Better wines, though, I remain confident, are yet to come.
From Vacationland, I wish you best of luck with your wines, and don't forget to throw out your old Rieslings. Don't even cook with them. I'm quite serious.

Wine 8

2008-06-01T14:19:00.000-05:00

This week, a real treat. This was a pretty typically light and fruity Mosel Valley Spätlese Riesling, twenty-odd years ago. Now, it's taken on a very serious character, and the overt fruity tones typical of that region have softened. The wine carries the slate soil of the region on its earthy nose. There is a hint of something curious on the wine, almost the smell of algae and old books. The fruit, although muted, is still present, and has picked up apricot and, very distinctly, celery.
This Riesling, sweet and late-harvested, has taken a sour overtone which is not at all unpleasant. It tastes immediately of Granny-Smith apples, tangy and crisp, and softens to a smoky, oily finish that has, unfortunately, begun to cork a little. The flavor resolves to a gentle tobacco flavor, and lingers quietly at the back of the nose. This is the rare white that seems able to stand up to twenty-five years in a cellar.
I'm pretty sure I haven't been treating this wine as well as it deserves. I think it would benefit from spending time in a proper cellar. My storage is out of direct sunlight and the temperature remains pretty constant, but probably not at what you'd call “right.” I'm sure that, were I an expert or even willing to do the research necessary, I'd probably keep my wine in an enclosed room with carefully controlled circulation, 50% humidity controlled by an electronic system and a special thermostat to keep the wine between 55 and 57 degrees Fahrenheit.
But I don't. I keep my wine in a back closet, in a rack (which does, I'm not a barbarian, encourage air circulation), out of direct sunlight. My house is probably closer to 78 degrees and the humidity changes with the whims of the Texas breezes.
Despite this, the wine has held up remarkably.
I'll admit, this is a kind of curiosity in my collection. I didn't buy this wine in 1982. I probably bought it a scant 8 years ago, in honor of my younger brother's 21st birthday, he having also been born in 1982. I bought several bottles for him, and a couple for myself. I still have a few held back for his upcoming 30th, and I'm hoping the rest hold up as well as the one I've opened today.

Wine 7

2008-05-25T16:11:00.001-05:00

To me, this feels a little much like stacking the deck. This is a "Bordeaux Style Wine," from a producer in Carmel Valley. It's a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petite Verdot. This seems a wine built for aging well, and it holds up wonderfully, even under the pressure of nine years of amateurish storage. I had high hopes for this wine, a mutt bred of several varietals and in a region of varied soils. Mutts, as we all know, possess the truest character, and a hearty Table Red can be the finest mutt of all.
I detected strong cherry immediately, and a leathery oak flavor. We disagreed on the specific woodiness, as it became more like cedar or fresh-shaved ash. There is a fresh, crispness to the wood, summing to a really complex and fruity nose. Unlike some of the others in this experiment, this wine has maintained a huge amount of character.
The first thing we all noticed (there were the same three as last week) upon tasting is that this is a much drier wine that the others. The tannins have not disappeared from it, although they have no doubt mellowed. This is a very acidic wine with an unmistakable lime flavor and a Hickory smoke finish. The wine is thin in the mouth, but fills the nose completely.
This is a tasty wine and it has aged well.

Wine 6

2008-05-18T15:50:00.001-05:00

Basa is a banner under which several tasty Spanish wines are gathered. This wine in particular seems to come from Valladolid, Spain, as far as the sparse labeling on the bottle suggests. Valladolid is an inland city and a producer of several types of wine.
This is another wine which has turned a disturbing shade of yellow. I recall its being very clear when it was new, a light colored and light bodied wine. My understanding of Ruedos in general and this wine in particular is that they tend toward the fruity and pleasant. The reviews for the current vintage suggest that drinking it in the next 12 months is the wisest course of action.
My bottle of Basa Ruedos has been sitting, undisturbed, in the back of my cellar for the last ten years. Upon my removing the cork, the wine hissed at me, which is never a good sign. Its color is a tacit threat.
Upon first removing the cork, I noted a distinct hint of blueberry which evaporated almost immediately. A fellow taster who braved this wine said it momentarily suggested cherry syrup. Of the three of us there, each smelled a different, distinct odor for a single instant as the wine was exposed to its first gasp of fresh air in a decade. Had we discovered a wine made of purest Bombastium?
No, in fact not, although, for the sake of completeness, I will include here that I also believe I smelled a mild fruit, probably kumquat, on the very back of this wine's nose.
Upon consumption, there was almost no flavor at all, at least at first. What little there was couldn't quite overpower the strong alcohol which had become most of the actual taste of the wine. But then, just to prove that we weren't all tasting different wines, it hit us all at once.
The smell, very distinct, of burning tobacco. At first, I likened it uncharitably to cigarette remains but on reflection amended the statement. Two of us agreed that it was precisely the flavor of a pipe backing up during smoking. All of us agreed, the wine tasted very distinctly of burning, and we agreed, albeit somewhat less strongly, that it was burning tobacco.
After drinking the wine, I was able to detect the tobacco flavor in the bouquet, even after thoroughly clearing my palate and mouth.
This was a curious thing, as one can be so amused by a foodstuff which tastes so entirely other than it smells. At least, I can. I wouldn't call this a good wine, certainly, although it was probably a very palatable one when it was fresh. Now, sadly, tasting so strongly of smoke and ash, it is only a relatively pleasant memory.

Wine 5

2008-05-11T12:01:00.002-05:00

This is another wine which almost made me very sad.

When it was fresh, this was a tannic wine with fruity overtones. I was fond of it, enough so to purchase four bottles and forget about two of them. My father turned me on to it, declaring it his house wine, if he had anything to say about it. I believe that, with a little help from me, we went through at least three cases of this excellent year.

I found the tannins to be more forward than I often like, but I love that the fruits can still be distinguished over them. With age, every quality I found to pleasant has been enhanced and the oak has fallen away. Like the others, it has no legs at all, and it is not a bad thing. The flavors fall away from the mouth, leaving plum skin and blueberries.

The aroma is mild and the color is beautiful. This wine has retained much more of any of its qualities than the previous wines, and those entirely to its credit.

I wish I had more to say to about this wine, but it's wonderful. It comes from the Central California coast. It was a good wine before and it has remained so. I believe Petite Sirah is one of the grapes that contributes to the misapprehension that all old wine is good wine. Quality wines preserved with care can become tasty old wines. This one certainly has done so.

One interesting note which I find I have room to mention here: these wines are destroyed by air in a matter of hours in the best cases and moments in the worst. In the space of time in which I consumed one glass of this wine, about fifteen minutes, the tannins came forward and the wine began to actively oxidize. This is a lovely, ephemeral experience, and it makes the exercise more fun, at least for me.

Speaking of lovely, ephemeral experiences, Happy Mother's Day!

Wine 4

2008-05-04T16:46:00.000-05:00

Today, I mourn the passing of a perfectly acceptable wine. I have fond memories of this wine being crisp and refreshing as I sat on my back porch, the Texas sun beating a July tattoo upon my much younger head. I'm sad that this wine escaped my notice for eight of the last nine years.

I became aware of the vintners when they were featured at my local grocery store. I suppose I should mention that I live in a relatively urban area, filled with people who like to feel smart about their food. People identify themselves by that horrible epithet around here. You should be aware so that when I say Grocery store, you understand that I mean one which has to compete not with Seven Eleven but with Whole Foods. I'm just sayin'.

The Eroica was a collaboration between Chateau Ste Michelle and Dr Loosen, a combination of Washington's Columbia Valley and the know-how of a solid middle-grade grower in the Mosel region of Germany, both vintners capable of producing a tasty if ephemeral wine. Such is the nature of the Riesling. It is a volatile grape and one which should not be stored. The best Rieslings will never see a birthday.

I will, then, describe my memory of this wine before I pour a single drop from the bottle.

The wine is delicate, fruity and a little sparse, suggesting a very mild experience and a minimally ugly assault on the senses. The wine delivers notes of cherry and lavender, smelling of a fresh-mown lawn of wildflowers wafting a mile over a hill to a porch where one sits, drinking a simple glass of sweet, pure water.

The flavor is pure pansy and violet, quiet flowers with distinct if subtle flavors. As the wine fades from the palate, the hint of dryness is suddenly and completely lost in the beauty of the smooth, crisp finish.

Ten years does a lot of good for a memory. For a Riesling, maybe not so much.

The wine itself has yellowed badly and lost all viscosity. The liquid has a troubling, sullen look to it. I notice distinct particulate in the tiny bubbles which have formed on my Duz glass.

The wine smells of stagnancy and decay. The sugar has fallen to ruin. The flowers have become compost. The flavor is pure rotten apple. The finish has become a hideous parody of itself, barging darkly into the nostrils and taking the sinuses at gunpoint. The tannins and alcohol have come forward to the detriment of anything good or wholesome that may have been contained in the formerly subtle and complex substance.

This is not good wine. This is a horrible, grinding lapdance on the grave of good wine. This is a travesty in a bottle. This is a pity.

This is a wine with such beautiful promise but absolutely no shelf life. This is a wine which was inducted into the National Honor Society only to live out a career managing burgers at a used car wash. My sweet memories will hold me, though, until next week, when I will again delve into my cellar.

All the best.

Wine 3

2008-04-27T16:01:00.000-05:00

I'll admit, I was a little afraid. Chardonnays often turn evil in their dotage, as I have discovered. The genesis of this project involved two bottles of the same which disgusted myself and a friend whom I intend to inflict upon this publication any week now. Those wines had a flavor which I can only describe as rancid. It was, then, with trepidation that I began upon the current voyage into the dusty recesses of my wine closet.

This wine comes from the Beringer vineyard. I find that their wines tend to be solid entries into the category but have never been as impressed with them as with some other wineries. Indeed, the Fess Parker Viognier, when it was but a jaunty nouveau, was one of those which particularly impressed me, just as an example.

The Beringer Brothers winery is in Napa Valley, between St. Helena and Calistoga on Highway 29, as their web page will happily tell you. Also gleaned from their page is the fact that the institution was founded in 1976. I thought this fact omitted from the label itself, but found it to indeed have been printed in letters of the height of mustard seeds on a tiny seal near the bottom. The vintner has either become proud of its age in the meantime, or were cashing in on the love of Fresh Wines which characterized the California Wine Boom of the 90s.

The label on this wine suggests this to be a “slightly drier” wine, the blended combination of 80% North Coast White Zinfandel and 20% barrel-fermented Chardonnay, and perhaps, a decade ago, that was the case. Today, however, the body has entirely gone out of this previously viscous wine. I suppose that's a trend in older wines. This just looks like pink water in my glass.

The aroma of this wine is a little overpowering at first, but it certainly has grown on me. It has a pretty solid raspberry quality, but it's only an undercurrent and it evaporates under scrutiny. What it has, though, and very distinctly, is the wild quality one tends to find in local home-brews of mustang and other feral grapes. The sugars have developed pleasantly into a wild and musty whole. The alcohol has come forward, but as it drifts away, it leaves wild grape afternotes.

The flavor is very mild, although the dryness is certainly detectable. It is not ugly or crass, though, the overall effect being more like a thin red than a beefy white. This wine has made the leap from acceptable rosé, one which would hold its own against chicken or perhaps a watery lamb to a pleasant desert wine, a fine tail end to a good meal.

Wine 2

2008-04-20T15:54:00.000-05:00

Perhaps I am not alone in having grown up with Fess Parker's portrayal of Davy Crockett. I certainly hope I am not the only one who gets little chills when I hear the phrase “Killed him a b'ar when he was only three.” There's power in our childhood, and that power is, I am absolutely sure, what enticed me to purchase a Viognier from the Fess Parker vineyards in Los Olivos, California. I had heard from at least one other avid wine-consumer that the product was superior, and that 1996 was a good year for white wines. When that avid wine drinker saw, four years later, that I still had this bottle, he suggested that Viogniers, like so many white wines, were at their best within the first year or two of bottling, and that keeping them for longer, one takes a great risk.

Now, ten years later, I have popped the cork on the bottle. I bought two Viogniers at the time, this and one which I'll open later. Each has seen its share of problems.

When I went to open the bottle, the lead had puffed up over the somewhat sunken cork. Tartaric crystals had formed around the neck, and the bottle smelled like wine, which is never a good sign. The top of the cork broke up a little as I pulled it, but remained on the whole intact.

This wine is fragrant, but not overpowering. It has a very light floral scent, suggesting daffodils and lilies. Like last week's Merlot, it has no legs, but unlike that wine, it has taken on some particulate matter from the cork. As it warms, the fruits come out, a little apple, and the sweet grape quality still preserved despite its decade encased in my dark closet. The flowers are still present, highlighting the fruits.

Although I do not believe this to have been even a lightly carbonated wine, tiny bubbles have formed on the sides of the glass.

It really is a pity to drink this wine. It's sad. I can tell from the scent, and I believe I remember drinking another Viognier from the same year, this was a very tasty white. Now, it's sour and leaves a tingling on the tongue. The fruits have become an acidic burn, searing the tip of my tongue. Luckily, that particularly thin body makes the effect short-lived, but I would not call this wine toothsome. Perhaps with some more airing and a little too much of a chill, one could choke it down, but it would appear that my hesitation has ruined an otherwise perfectly drinkable wine.

The combination of the sourness and the overripe and sugary quality are a powerfully uncomfortable one-two punch. The flavor brings tears to my eyes as I continue. With greater quantities and buildup, the wine develops a crisp if musty finish. It mellows a bit, but my tongue has gone almost entirely numb. It feels like a limb reviving after a time without circulation.

I guess the taste isn't all bad, it just takes some getting used to. That first sip, I have to say, was wretched. After that, it became mostly acceptable. I still stand by my assertion that I have ruined a good wine with the addition of too much time, but this is not a terrible product. I believe this is still suitable for cooking, if mixed with some other flavor. I believe it could be used not unlike vinegar in salads or cooking.

Really, though, this was not so bad. I know, I promised horror last week, and I'm sure I'll be able to deliver. I was expecting this wine to be much worse, all in all. I had two bottles of chardonnay which I opened some months ago, only to discover that they had become entirely foul. Worry not, gentle reader, at least one of the lurkers in my closet is beyond drinking. With patience and an iron gullet, I await their approach.

Wine 1

2008-04-13T15:09:00.000-05:00

No doubt, this was not a bad wine before I allowed it to sit for ten years in my closet. It is one of the more likely candidates to be acceptable, given that it is a red wine and that it is a Merlot, a wine which can take a little age without becoming outright nasty.

My luck has held! No mishap occurred upon opening the bottle. The cork seems unharmed. I have chosen for the evening to use a juice glass from a set which came from boxed soap flakes, free giveaways from the vaunted 1960s. We believe the brand of soap to have been either Duz or Zud. This set was assembled by my direct family during the period, and their prodigious soap consumption is the reason for my having quite a collection of these glasses. I find they work very well as taster glasses, and that they allow the wine to breathe nicely.

This wine, the label tells me, is the result of the tiny viticultural region called the Escondido Valley. The charming story tells of Spanish explorers looking desperately for gold, secreted, or “Escondido,” in the region. The Escondido Valley lies in Pecos County, Texas, the seat of which is Fort Stockton. The area is located on the western edge of the state, at the shoulder of the arm of which El Paso is the thumb. The region, called an American Viticultural Area, is 32.000 acres, which sounds like a lot until you convert it into just over 50 square miles. It lies just East of Fort Stockton, near I-10.

The literature warns charmingly of flavors of oak and raspberry, pretty usual suggestions of what one should try to taste.

The first thing I notice about this wine is that it is absolutely the thinnest bodied I've ever tried. Perhaps when it was younger, it would have coated the walls of my glass, but now it falls away more readily than unferminted grape juice. Is this a bad thing? Certainly not, especially in a wine more than a decade old! Don't forget, this was probably intended to be table wine, consumed within its first five years.

This Merlot has a strong nose and, unlike so many table wines, actually delivers on the promise of raspberry tones. I can smell the alcohol, meaning the wine is beginning to break down, but enrobing that aroma in velvet is a strong essence of cherry. The wine actually has a wonderfully complex nose, with hints of the ferrous earth and dust. Beyond the sharpness of the grape it smells homey, like a west Texas bunkhouse. That cherry flavor, I have to say, is really very strong and pleasant. It smells, I should add, like cherries themselves, not like cherry flavoring or that godawful Maraschino stuff. It doesn't smell like sugar, but like ripe, sour fruit.

As it warms in my hand, it develops a little more viscosity, but really, it is a very thin wine.

After that lovely aroma, drinking it seems akin to tempting fate. The first flavor, unmistakably, is tannin. Then, that cherry comes up very brightly and leaves a very pleasant finish. I don't know if it's quite Oak. I think it's more like oak leaves or the aforementioned and omnipresent dust of the West Texas plains. It has a dry but quick finish due in no small part, I'm sure, to that very think body. This is, overall, a very pleasant wine to drink.

The reason I purchased this wine so many years ago was simply that I thought the label looked nice, and I was drinking a lot of Merlot at the time. I seem to recall this wine having been placed in a basket display at the liquor store up the hill from my old house. I think it wasn't long after that I switched over to whites for quite some time, and never came back to this particular bottle. I think it has aged well, all things considered.

Next week: Horror!