It pays to drink your wine and keep it

 I have finally got round to buying and drinking some 2019 vintage wines.  I also found a wonderful wine and a not so wonderful one which have been kept for several years.

2019 Merinas White Wine made from organically grown grapes in the Uclés region of Castilla in Central Spain. The wine is made from Airen, Viura & Verdejo white grapes. This is basic quality wine which is good enough to be drunk with food we downed it with roast chicken. The wine is fruity on the nose and palate and for some reason I could taste a hint of bananas again; and at my age I should have grown out of this habit. You can buy half a case of this for £42 so it represents good value for money given the diabolical exchange rate of the pound versus the Euro and US dollar since Brexit; I fear this trend is set to continue - nevermind.

 I recommend this wine as you do not have to delve deep into your pocket and it has not suffered in any way from being released early.

2019 Terre di Faiano Nero d'Avola Organic Red produce in Sicily. Waitrose supermarket where I bought the wine describes the wine thus: "an explosion of juicy blueberries, blackberries and red plums"  They have described this wine perfectly. It is simply gorgeous and it is one of the best wines I have ever tasted and it is being sold at £7.49 a bottle. I am going back for more as the value for money is simply great. A prize should be awarded to the wine producers and Waitrose buyers. We drank a half bottle of this wine one evening with rib-eye steak followed the next evening with roast chicken. 

The wine was produced from dried grapes a process which concentrates the flavours hence the term Appassimento on the label.  I would pay twice the price for this wine and still feel that I had got good value for money. Well done Waitrose supermarket for finding this wine and selling it at such a good price.

https://www.waitrosecellar.com/terre-di-faiano-nero-davola-dop-le-702487

2010 Skalli Terra Vecchia Corsican  Rosé: this wine is from l’île de beauté. Corsica is genuinely a beautiful island with friendly people and wonderful scenery. The seafood is delicious and they make good, if not brilliant, wines to go with it. I was  shocked that it lasted so long and still tasted reasonably fresh even though it was sealed with a plastic cork. The wine had very slightly oxidised after such a long time, but  you might miss this if you weren't looking for it and hadn't swirled the wine in the glass and given it a good sniff. I am not overly fond of Rosé wine as it often has a slightly bitter after taste for me, and this one was no exception. The wine went done well with fish. My wife preferred it. We bought this is a French supermarket at a very cheap price so it was worth the money. I think that it is better to consume wine stoppered with plastic corks within five or six years of purchase. This wine should be drunk young anyway, but it had been hidden away on its side in the dark.

https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/skalli+terra+vecchia+rose+igp+ile+de+beaute+pays+france

https://boston.consulfrance.org/French-Corner-This-spring-discover-Corsica-l-ile-de-beaute

2011 Bordeaux Baron Phillipe de Rothschild Red appellation contrôlée: I was surprised that this wine was stoppered with a plastic cork, but nevermind it made a "romantic" popping noise when I opened it. After all this time, the wine was in perfect condition. It had hardly oxidised but there was soft tannin and the typical Bordeaux smell and taste. The wine had the complexity and concentration that I would have expected from a renowned producer that was acting as a negociant. This wine is probably a blend of different wines from the region. Even though it was not expensive it is still very good wine and well worth the 6 or 7 Euro that we paid for it. We drank it with steak and it went down very well. I suspect that if the wine had been sealed with a composite cork then it would have now been well past its best, as air would have penetrated the cork.  If you suspect that a wine has been stoppered with a plastic cork it might be best to cut the capsule of the top of the bottle and then you can decide if you want to keep the wine longer than the five years recommended. However, who knows how long this wine would have kept with an almost perfectly airtight seal. Probably, top French wines will be stoppered with genuine corks into the distant future to help them age perfectly and I am all in favour of this. For everyday wines why not use screwtops and plastic corks etc. if it helps to substantially reduce the risk of corked wines.

https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/baron+philip+de+rothschild+bordeaux+france/2011/any

So there you have it, it pays to drink most your wine young and it pays to keep it if it is well sealed. If you have paid top dollar for French, Italian , US, Australian or Spanish wine etc. then cellar it.

Cor blimey a bottle of 1989 Mouton Rothschild for 18 bucks

 It was in the news: the New York restaurant Balthazar mistakenly gave a bottle of Mouton Rothschild worth $2,000 to a couple who had ordered an $18 bottle of "Pinot Noir". The wine waiter then served the "Pinot Noir" to some well-heeled businessmen who had sat down to believe they were drinking a top premier cru wine from Bordeaux. The wine waiter had used the same style of decanter for both wines and then mixed  the containers up.

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2020/10/ny-restaurant-mistakenly-serves-2000-wine-to-couple-who-ordered-18-pinot/

The businessmen commented on the purity of their wine. Possibly, they were drinking a wine made from 100% pinot noir but I doubt it at that price. The Mouton Rothschild would have been a blend of black grapes dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

I have been in the fortunate position to go to a "business meeting" where the boss ordered a top red Bordeaux; fortunately, he knew what he was doing and none of us was so inebriated that we could not tell that we were drinking a top wine.

The couple joked that they were drinking a top wine but still did not realise the mistake. Perhaps, they had better palates than they thought or they were not letting on.

The restaurant could have let sleepings dogs lie and got away with the mistake. But the owner did not charge the businessmen so he lost a lot of money, but the wine would have been considerably marked up and the restaurant probably bought the wine years ago for a much cheaper price.

The couple had the pleasure of drinking a top wine for a peppercorn price.

It does not surprise me that none of the customers realised that a mistake had been made. The power of suggestion is so strong. The couple would have believed that they were drinking a bottle of cheap wine, and they were not trained to recognise a top-quality one. The businessmen believed they were drinking a top premier cru and judged that that is exactly what they got.

I have been on a number of wine courses where you are taught to identify a good quality wine that is good value for money. It is difficult, but you should be able to recognise a wine that can keep for a long time. A wine that can keep for a long duration and improve in the bottle in a cellar will not be cheap. The wine must be made from the best grapes and by winemakers who know what they are doing. 

The Mouton Rothschild in question would have matured in the bottle and would have become lighter in colour, the tannin would have softened and the wine would have tasted concentrated and complex and the fresh fruit flavours of a young wine would have ripened. Anyone who has experienced drinking or just tasting the best wines, which have aged well, would have recognised that this was an exceptional wine. The businessmen may have been able to spot a good deal but not a good wine. If there was a wine enthusiast present then he or she would probably have been distracted and subject to the power of suggestion.

The power of suggestion is so strong that you should taste wines "blind" to assess them. The power of suggestion can fool anybody, and in my experience, even masters of wine are not immune and they can be fooled just as easily as anyone else. Some red Burgundy wines made from 100% pinot noir are quite light-coloured when young and could appear to have lightened from age - hence the confusion perhaps.

However, one sniff and an experienced wine taster would know the difference.

One thing is certain, you might be able to tell a Burgundy from a Bordeaux or a French wine from a Spanish one. But, identifying a particular chateau and its vintage is nigh on impossible only the actual winemakers and their assistants can do this. 

My wife is from Champagne and she can identify wines from the north of the region as opposed to the south, and now I can do this. Her father was born in Burgundy but in the far north of the region: we have drunk so much wine from this area that we can recognise the wine style but not the producer and the year. 

Wine drinking and identification is a  subjective business, it is difficult to be objective but you can use wine tasting techniques to good effect as long as you keep your feet on the ground. You can be trained to recognise a good wine and better still a fine wine that doesn't cost the earth.

I hope that the couple were able to appreciate their good fortune and are now able to dine out on it. I hope that the businessmen could see the funny side of what happened and that they still enjoyed their wine and their good fortune in securing a good deal. This is what wine appreciation is truly about and it is not about being snobbish or looking down on anybody to make them look foolish.