Too Good To Be True?

I was googling around to find out how much the staff paid for my birthday present.

What? Like you've never done that.

While I was searching, I happened to stumble upon another old Bordeaux. A Chateau Petit Faurie de Soutard, 1966. I'd never heard of the producer, but it was $25. So I bought it.

Ullage is how aficionados refer to the fill line. And they have a further set of terms to describe exactly how full the bottle is. Old Bordeaux can be "mid shoulder" or "low shoulder." Old Burgundy doesn't have a shoulder; the bottle is different, so the ullage is measured in centimeters.

This bottle had a very high (although not unheard of) ullage for a wine of its age: "Base of neck" (see photo). The bouquet smelled surprisingly young, bright cherry fruit, though with time in the air, it would evolve into a more age appropriate nose of baked tomatoes and cedary spices. In the mouth, this was really exceptional; bright cherry and other red fruits with interesting secondary flavors of orange rind, spearmint, burnt sugar and some few dusty, still breathing, tannins.

On this data alone, I'd assume the wine couldn't have been over 40 years old. Forgery in old Bordeaux has been a big business lately. But who has time to make fake claret that sells for $25?

There were, of course, clues that supported the vintage on the label. The wine was the brick red of antique Bordeaux. The cork was stained almost all the way to the moldy end. And came out in 3 pieces, then crumbled.

But the wine didn't taste old. At least, it didn't until all the fruit fell away and the acid swelled. After an hour in a decanter is when the magic died.

I put it in the fridge which knocked down the acid. After a couple more hours, some secondary elements emerged, mocha and mint and the fruit came back, but tasted more like dried cherries.

So was this the real deal? A forty-three year old Bordeaux?

I think it's likely.

Although I couldn't say for sure.

I Look Like a Monkey

Yesterday was my birthday. The Lab Staff, no doubt hoping to stave off inevitable layoffs, chipped in for an antique Bordeaux. A 1966 Château Ducru-Beaucaillou.

It was wonderfully aromatic, with a perfumed bouquet of cedar, orange rind, leather and dried cherries that literally filled the room.

On the palate, this is on the downhill leg with neither much complexity nor density remaining. Faint, dried fruit flavors were supported by an oddly fresh, not acetic, acidity.

I can only hope I'm holding up better than this wine.

Thanks everyone.

Tastes Like 1964

Dear and Gentle Reader, You recall when last we spoke, we were setting off to open a wine from the 1964 vintage. The year the Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. When Cassius Clay knocked down Sonny Liston to begin his reign as "the Greatest." MLK won the Nobel Peace Prize. Goldfinger was in movie theaters. And t-shirt icon, Che Guevara, addressed the UN.

It was a very long time ago.

We carried our little antique to a work table and gingerly cut away the capsule. We gently removed the crumbling cork and delicately poured the wine. It was an anxious moment, fraught with the many tensions of possibility.

The nose is lovely. Warm and welcoming. Sweet, ripe fig and cigar box, with light hints of peppery spice. The first impression in the mouth is sweet cherry. There is some bitter, acetic tang on the finish, but on balance it's still drinkable!

There were a few high fives and fist bumps shared by a small coterie of dedicated lab workers. I thought one of our viticulture specialists was actually crying, but he explained an errant high five had caught him in the eye.

Fifteen minutes passed before we returned to the glass. The fruit bouquet is fading. Now it just smells like a musty attic, old and waning. But the fruit is still bright on the palate, and a few secondary flavors are beginning to emerge, nutmeg spice and leather.

After thirty minutes, the secondary elements take over. The glass smells of warm bread pudding with Christmas spices.

When an hour had passed we went back again. Wow! All of the above are now twirling about in the glass together, and the palate has settled down and softened. There is no acidic bite, no acetic tang. There's even a sense of smooth, soft tannin on the finish.

Our excitement, no doubt, had more to do with not opening a bottle of vinegar than with the quality of the plonk. And it was certainly interesting to chronicle its evolution in the glass. But, in truth, it was only okay (even if it did welcome sexy and exotic descriptors).

But there is no question that drinking this was more fun than we would have had with a $20 bottle of something off the shelves at the Foodmart.

Just Old: A Home Experiment Kit

The global financial meltdown means that we've found some outstanding bargains at auction recently. Our favorite online auction site is Winebid.com. Winebid begins a new auction every Sunday night, just after that prior auction closes. A few weeks ago, we decided to buy the most old and least expensive bottle on the site.

Just to see what OLD tastes like.

(This is an experiment you can try at home!)

We successfully bid on a 1964 Jouvet. It's a mere split (375 ml), but from grapes grown, picked and squeezed 44 years ago. We paid $20, plus hammer and shipping.

Through extensive, almost spastic, Googling, we were able to find out next to nothing about this wine. It's from Saint-Julien, a region at the center of the Haut Medoc known for it's aromatic wines and gravelly soil. It was bottled by a negociant named T. Jouvet for the importer Munson G. Shaw of New York. Shaw once imported, amongst other things, the wines of Baron Phillippe de Rothschild. Shaw's company was acquired in 1963 by National Distillers.

In sum, all we know is this was a basic red table wine on its best day. And that day was long ago.

But we're curious about the wino's age fetish, so we'll open it under Laboratory conditions.

Stick around.