Community Tasting Note

MJMcCarthy Likes this wine:

Friday, September 8, 2023 - If you have a bottle of this wine, drink it yesterday. it won't get any better, but it continues to show signs of life!

I enjoyed this bottler with a meal of lamb chops, sautéed mushrooms and a vegetable mix (zucchini, onions, green and red peppers, and squash).

This venerable wine is a quiet conversation with an old friend, where you speak in whispers, but of weighty things.

A twenty-two-year-old vintage of a southern Rhône wine is a bit of a risk, but this one pays off. The wine does show its age, with a full centimeter of ullage below the capsule, noticeable streaking up the cork and browning around the rim, but it nonetheless shows signs of life.

The bouquet is dominated by tertiary aromas that result from its years in the bottle: leather, cigar box and prominent "funk" (Brettanomyces). It sits with medium-body on the palette hinting at its restrained 13.5% ABV. Its warm, gentle tannins are a soft, fleece blanket.

The savory entree and sides bind with the tannins to coax out fading echoes of fruit, including cassis, cherry and raspberry, that evolve across a gradual decrescendo over a long finish.

This wine is an historical document, a true message-in-a-bottle, crafted and sealed by the winemaker until opened and received this evening, more than two decades later.

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