Ever since watching the documentaries SOMM and SOMM: Into the Bottle (available on Netflix) I’ve been very curious about what very old wines are like; are they really that incredible!?!
On a recent visit to a wine store I happened upon a magnum (1.5 litres) of Portuguese wine from 1997 for around $60. I knew it was no 1969 Dom Ruinart Champagne (opened in SOMM: Into the Bottle), but in my world this was old wine, and it was relatively affordable, so I inquired. The consultant I spoke with explained that it is really good wine, but Portuguese wine is currently undervalued, hence the price. After telling me about the magnum he steered me towards a regular sized bottle of Portuguese wine for $28; it was from 2000. The consultant told me about the wine and how one of his clients keeps coming back for it. I thought, for $28, this would be a good experiment with “old” wine.
I brought the wine home and let it rest a couple weeks before I opened it. The wine is made from two grape varietals: Touriga Nacional (“tor-ee-gah nah-see-un-nall”) and Baga. Touriga Nacional is a grape that you will often find in Port; these grapes are high in tannin with flavours of black fruit (www.winefolly.com). Baga grapes are small and thick-skinned like Cabernet Sauvignon, so they have high acidity and good tannins with flavours of red fruit, tobacco and coffee (www.winesofportugal.info).
When the time came to open the bottle I decanted it carefully into a carafe (older wines tend to have sediment at the bottom of the bottle), and let it breath for two hours before I tried it. I did some research ahead of time to determine what foods to pair the wine with and one website suggested mild, semi-soft cheeses, so I followed suit. Here is my experience with the wine.
The wine was medium garnet in colour and I spent a very long time nosing it. It had notes of ripe and concentrated black fruit, sage, prunes, strawberry and grape jam, wet wood and a hint of vanilla. The wine was very aromatic so I was expecting something equally intense on the palate.
When I took my first sip I felt very confused as I really didn’t taste much of anything. I tried again, swishing the wine around my mouth, sucking-in some air, and still nothing! On the third try there may have been some very soft plum, but if there were plums on the palate, they were not very ripe plums. I didn’t know what to think. I tried the wine with several mild cheeses, as recommended, and, combined with cheese, the wine produced a fizzy sensation in my mouth.
I read one review of this wine that said the wine “held” well for a couple of days, so I decided to wait a couple of days and see what happened. Two days later the aromas of fruit had receded and the nose had become smokey with stewed fruit, toasted oak barrels and graphite pencils. The palate was still very soft; maybe a bit gamey with notes of lavender. This time I paired it with mushroom risotto and it did not cause a fizzy sensation in my mouth.
By the time I finished the bottle I still felt perplexed; it wasn’t an offensive wine by any stretch of the imagination, but it was not outstanding either. I wanted to know what would draw someone back to this wine time and time again; was I missing something? I wanted to learn how to appreciate this wine for what it was and not try to make it something it was not.
So I went back to the wine store and sought out the same consultant to find out more. I described my experience to him and explained that I was telling him this so I could learn what people appreciate about this wine. He said that the wine stood out for him because of its intense flavours and long finish; it was like we were drinking completely different wines. Although the wine was not corked, the consultant thought that perhaps the wine was still “off” resulting in the experience I had, and he offered his apologies.
In the end my experience with the wine was so vastly different than that of the consultant and the reviewers on wine-searcher.com, that I have to conclude there was indeed something wrong with the bottle I purchased. I didn’t however like the wine enough to want to spend an additional $28 to see if another bottle of the wine would be better. It was an interesting experience though, and perhaps one day I will get to try a wine that truly has some age.