2/9/2024 - Echinosum wrote: flawed

I'll be kind and call it flawed. It was on the edge between drink and chuck, and in the end I drank it. The main problem is it was a bit maderised, or more than a bit. There's a risk that was a feature rather than a bug, though deliberate maderisation is unusual in sweet wines that are only 11.5% alcohol. Behind the maderisation, there was a reminiscence of the delicious tamaioasa you could, for a while, get for about £2 in a British supermarket in the 1980s, when communist Romania was desperate for hard currency.

At least the communist Romanians sold their own good wine for good prices in British supermarkets to get the money. Unlike the Bulgarians who bottled South African wine under Bulgarian labels, and were paid only for money laundering. (Ever wonder why you can't get anything like that delicious new-world style Balkan Vine Cabernet after the Iron Curtain came down, not even in Bulgaria? To explain its disappearance, they tell some story about buying a large batch of new barrels in a fit of central planning, and then being unable to afford replacements. But the real problem is that right-on people no longer boycotted South African produce, and their laundering services were no longer required.)

But that 1980s tamaioasa was pale and peachy, not rancio and the colour of morning urine after hard night. And I see Cotnari also sell tamaioasa, though grasa is a different and unrelated grape. And I also read that Grasa de Cotnari is a botrytis affected wine, like Tokaji, and supposed to go yellow, what I have was very much darker than the picture of the precise same wine you see at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gras%C4%83_de_Cotnari. And this isn't reminding me of Tokaji.

The story is a friend gave it to me, after some Romanian neighbours gave it to her, and she is not the kind to drink bottles at home on her own. Or maybe she'd already had some chez them, and that was enough. Maybe the maderisation was a consequence of being driven around in a hot car across Europe for several weeks in the summer holidays to bring it back to Britain, and then kept in a centrally heated house. Another thing it reminds me of is the time I was stuck in Almaty in Kazakhstan - then still Alma Ata - for 4 weeks on business, in the early 90s shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the few things to relieve the boredom was some Hungarian dry white wine you could get in the central market - to consume alongside the local oscietra caviare at $5 for a 100g tin. That likewise tasted a bit maderised, doubtless a consequence of the roasting summer climate in central Asia, though it was now midwinter and intermittently down to -25C. So I'm not unaccustomed to that taste.

I opened it, and out of loyalty to my friend who gave it to me, determined to drink it unless that really was a step too far. At least it brought back some memories, especially of that delicious tamaioasa I drank in my youth, even if it only had elements of that. And probably its like shall never be seen again, like so may other amazing bargains that you could buy in the 1980s.

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