Wine Blog
A Bad Run
Posted by: Trudy and Rob
Wednesday, December 10, 2008 2:55 PM
We were recently up in Chicago for the Thanksgving weekend. We stayed at my brother's house, one well supplied primarily with California cabernets, my brother's favorite. He has multiple wine coolers in a few locations to store the wines, and sometimes certain bottlings just get lost or neglected, particularly if they are not premium cabernets (I've tried to broaden his horizons, so far with only limited success). As we were rummaging through his collection, trying to find different bottles, we ran across several of what I call cellar orphans, bottles that have mstly become lost in the crowd. We took several bottles of cab to the relatives and a cellar orphan as well. Additionally, he sent a few of these bottles back home with me saying that he probably wouldn't get to them himself. The results of trying these wines was not exactly the greatest experience we've ever had.
At my cousins, we opened up (among many others) a bottle of 01 Walter Hansell Chardonnay. This should have been a good bottle from a good producer if perhaps getting a bit long in the tooth for a chard. Instead, it perhaps qualified for the most vile bottle of wine I've ever tasted. For whatever reason, it had turned so bad that I placed a skull and crossbones on the bottle as a polite warning to others. Only one other person tried it. He lived, but just barely. This bottle was probably bad right out of the box, but the years didn't help any.
We brought several bottles home with us. The 1996 Marrietta Cellars cabernet was basically DOA with no fruit or pleasure left in the bottle. These guys are generally very good producers but they don't make their cabs to last this long. There was a funky 02 Argentinean Malbec that ended up going down the drain, as well as an older Austrailian shiraz. The final disappointment came with a 2000 Turnbull red blend. This ordinarily very fine (and kind of expensive) red found it's way down the drain because it was badly corked, completing an incredibly bad run. The age on this one had nothing to do with the corkiness, but it was sad anyway.
So what did we learn, Dorothy? First off, age does not necessarily always improve the wine in the bottle (I think we've stated this before). Some wines, mostly red, improve with age, while others begin that slow fade as soon as they are bottled. Second, bottling defects do exist, even with good producers. The Marrietta was just too old. The Malbec (even though it said reserve!) just wasn't that good. The others suffered from defects that do occasionally occur. For defective wine, if you remember where you got it, seal it back up and take it back to the store. Most reputable places will try to keep you happy...they want your business. If the wine is not defective but just not great, learn from your mistakes for your next purchases. Buy something different. And watch out for those bottles that display a skull and crossbones. They really aren't very good.
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