Apr 20, 2009
Know anything about wine?
I don’t know an enormous amount about wine. Like so many others, I know what I like, but not much else, and what I do know, I know about whites rather than reds (though I like and drink both).
So I need your help.
Over the years, I’ve been given various bottles of wine and champagne, usually through work (to say thanks for speaking at an event, or to celebrate a project end or something) or seasonal presents from friends. They’re usually quite nice bottles (I imagine, otherwise it’d be a pretty odd thank you present) but since I don’t drink wine much at home, I tend to bring them home, stick them in the wine-rack and then they sit there gathering dust until I find an excuse to open one.
The trouble is, I’ve also got bottles in the wine-rack which are of dubious provenance (my own fault – impulse buying but not drinking, or remnants from my lapsed wineclub membership from several years ago).
This means that in among the good stuff is some rubbish.
This was brought home to me last night when we opened a spectacularly corked and rough as dogs 1998 rioja and nearly choked on the smell alone, which still clings to the inside of my nose.
Now, you may be reading the paragraph above and thinking “well, obviously – any idiot knows that rioja doesn’t age well” (or similar) and if that’s the case, perhaps you can help.
I’ve taken photos of the bottles of red wine and champagne on my wine-rack, and I need your help to determine whether they’re any cop or not.
Basically, I need to find out:
– if they’re any good
– whether they should be drunk (drank?) soon or whether they’ll be ok to leave for a while
– whether they shouldn’t be drank (drunk?) at all until I have a very very special occasion because they’re actually great
Especially the latter.
Here’s the photo:
Yes and no.
Basically I have a good sense of what I like and what to avoid.
I also know that, for example the Chablis we had yesterday tasted great before food but tasted really badly after a fish pie. I can’t predict that, nor can I explain why.
The best advice I have ever heard is that the only taste that matters is one’s own. But, in general, wine doesn’t benefit from being stored wrong. If it has a cork cork, it won’t have benefitted rom having the cork dry out
Oops, premature ejaculation!
Given that you already have the wine, you have nothing to lose. If you don’t like it, bin it.
If you’re scared of serving dodgy stuff to guests, open it before they arrive, or in the kitchen. If it’s a cork cork, sniff the cork. You’ll know straight away it’s off.
The general guidance on standard £10 a bottle stuff from supermarkets is drink it within 2 years, but I’m sure 3 years won’t kill.
Don’t get too hung up on what the experts say, but don’t totally ignore them: there is a difference between a £3 bottle and a £12 bottle and £300 bottle, it’s driven by the market, by and large, but I don’t believe it’s big enough to justify for me the £300 bottle, but I can tell the difference between £3 and £12. But if you can’t, don’t beat yourself up about it.
Also, it’s about social niceties.
If it were, say, Anna and Bobbie coming for dinner, be upfront, say that you don’t know if it’s any good, but encourage them to say it’s rubbish, if it is.
If it were 12 people, scatter the bottles, and I bet most people will be so filled with self-doubt “How come I don’t like this and everyone else does?” or else “I know I am so superior to everyone in every way and I am demonstrating this by my disdain for the common wine that the common people are ignorantly scoffing unaware of the dreadful social faux pas they have just committed”
Remember, red at room temperature (don’t microwave it) and white and rose chilled (don’t use the freezer).
The 1997 Côtes de Bourg is ready for drinking now.
Corking is caused by bacteria on the cork and as such it does not make any difference whether the wine has been stored for 1 month or 10 years. It is also more or less random, so you can buy a case for a party and have 11 great bottles and 1 corked. This is why you are offered a sip of the wine in a restaurant to taste it, you’re supposed to check that the bottle is ok – as in not corked or otherwise spoilt – not whether you like the wine or not. It is also why you should always check the wine you serve at home and have a backup (this new year’s, for example, we had a Champagne chilled which should have been great but it was corked, we kicked ourselves for only chilling one…)
Corking can also occur with synthetic corks and screw-top corks, btw, it just happens less often, which is why many producers are switching. It also happens not only with wine, I’ve had corked whisky.
Also, storage: Even wine meant for storing needs to be stored correctly, preferably in a reasonably cool place and at as constant a temperature as you can manage. This is why people have wine cellars, but if you don’t (which, face it, applies to most of us) think about it and choose the spot in your house which fits the bill best. We store most of our wine in the bedroom cupboard, as we tend to keep the bedroom quite cool all year round. The basement, if you have one, is probably best. A wine rack in the kitchen looks good but should really only be used for bottles you mean to drink within a week or two at most.
As for the specific bottles, I’ll need to get back to you (unless someone beats me to it). The Chamapagne seems to be mostly reasonably “commercial” stuff (nothing wrong with that, but one the “affordable” scale and meant to be enjoyed rather than revered) and is meant to be drunk “now or somewhat later”, it won’t spoil if stored for a few years but can be drunk immediately. I’d pick the Charles Heidseick if you invited me over, or the Pierre Vaudon (which I haven’t had before), but which ones you’d prefer depends on taste, so I wouldn’t presume to tell you which one is “best”. (I prefer my Champagne bone dry, I mean, really, bone DRY, if that’s any help.)
If you get any responses along the line of “wait for very special occasion” on any of them, think about creating an occasion, as one of my friends (who collects wine and buys red £50 upwards bottles regularly) says: “A great bottle IS an occasion”. A quiet moment with a couple of friends is a much better setting for a really great bottle than a party, at a party there are other things to think about and you don’t have time to savour the wine (though I suppose a really boring party would be a good time for a great bottle, but then you’re unlikely to get one…)
My French girlfriend assures me that the ones with the prettiest labels are the nicest ones (for French wine, anyways). :)
My own knowledge is pretty appalling and I don’t even like most whites to begin with. What I do know is that Chateauneuf-du-Pape is considered “safe” in that it’s almost always a fairly nice wine. Riojas can be luuuvely, but are also a bit hit-and miss. As someone else said, it’s my understanding that the champers won’t really benefit from storage and can be drunk as and when needed.
All depends on how they’ve been kept of course, but presuming that they haven’t had too much temperature variation but the best way to find out about these wines is to go the wine social networking site
http://www.snooth.com
http://www.cellartracker.com
um … it’s all European stuff, I’m clueless.
I have a vaguely better idea of new world wines, but that’s about it.
I’d go with Gert’s suggestion. Open it, sniff it, drink it. If it’s rubbish, use it in cooking.
Look up the Chateuneuf – people tend to think it’s all posho French, where it could be fiver a bottle! I’m sure that’s desperately disrespectful to someone, I apologise profusely).
My memory of Nero D’Avola is that it’s lovely, but not a keeper (drink it up, yay!); the Medoc is 98, that’ll make it… hmmm. Some areas of France had a spiffing year in 98 and Medoc can age well, but then again it’s already 11 years old. My brother would know more about how long to keep things but… realistically, there aren’t *many* wines that you want to keep for 20/30+ years. A hell of alot of decent wines peak in their teens.
If you’ve been keeping it in a dark, cool place, then leave it there until it’s 15. If it’s been shoved about, kept in warm environs etc then you’ve nothing to lose, it should be coming back up by now (they ‘go to sleep’ for a few years after they’ve been bottled – the immediate flavours die down, but it takes ages for the secondary flavours to rise up in the mix. If you drink a decent wine too early eg: 5-7 years old, it’s a total waste of your money because it’ll taste flat as a pancake and you’re left thinking uh?.
Rioja I’m not so hot on. You could probably keep it another few years if it’s been kept well. Drink the champagne, basically… the haut-medoc, look it up to see if it’s decent. If it is, same rule applies as above for the medoc re: going to sleep. It’s way younger, so you want to put it away and not disturb it for a while. I know nuffink about Cote De Bourg but it doesn’t say Grand cru on it, so it’s a second wine. Second wines tend to be less posh (but still nice. We’ve got a couple of cases of a brilliant French second wine called “La Fief De La Grange” which is deelicious, and has the best name ever). Ermmm… it’s 97. Certainly drinkable now.
When I was childless and comparatively rich, I bought a bottle of wine that was on special, with an added Oddbins ‘little brother’ price reduction. £70 (I know. Insane). Chateau Haut Brion 2001. Sitting in our cool dark foundations. Now £415. not to drink for another… 20 years?
You want to ask Mr Locke. He’s an ex-Oddbins.
I’m of the “drink it or bin it” persuasion myself.
However, corkd.com ( http://corkd.com/ ) may also be of use to you.
I can’t really shed much light on your (mainly European) array of reds and champers (you’ve no-doubt drunk all the New Zealand wine as you knew they’d be fantastic) but I do see a great opportunity here for a new product – or maybe an extension of a current one…
There’s a pretty smart iPhone app – SnapTell http://tinyurl.com/69yh55 – which basically lets you take a photo of the cover of any CD, DVD, book, or video game, sends the image off to it’s online database and returns product info, ratings and pricing information to your phone in a matter of seconds.
I’d love to see the service extended to wine: Meg takes a photo of her aging lovelies in the winerack… SnapTell pings it off to the wine database and bingo! – up pops price, general info and customer ratings – dinner party disaster averted.
Likewise at the local supermarket or wine store – no more relying on th spotty faced check-out boy, or the slick point-of-sale marketing hype… but rather real opinions from real people, in (network allowing) real time.
Now that would be real useful.