Community Tasting Note

Sagan99 Likes this wine:

Friday, August 5, 2022 - Drinking my age with this one! '61 was a great year, and this experience was great 61 years later!
Drinking this wine at it's peak, is at least a decade or two past prime. But, I needed a wine to confirm long term storage conditions, and thus I wanted to test this wine, to see if it could make my 61 birthday.
Looks like we made it!

The cork was totally intact, and only bottle side 50% of it wet. No remnants of any kind of debris or decay. Fabulous! Though, here in Alberta, humidity is about perfect for storage. About 70%

Nebiollo
13.5 %abv when bottled

At 3 hours - Wow! What changes!
The wine remains as at opening,(below) with some remarkable changes !
The wine was clear with pale intensity. But the brightness of the garnet had " popped. It was much more intense red, within the tawny rim, which had shrunk ever so slightly.
Nose - now, red berries could be discerned, however faintly, with secondary and tertiary notes mentioned earlier.
Palate - similarly, in the palate there was a restoration of sorts in the primary red fruits, plums, berries, but only vaguely. The tertiary remained.The tannins showed themselves more, giving me a thought that this wine has maybe a few more years in it's agedness.

Conclusions- this wines best years are behind it.... And those years were more than a decade ago! Likely more.

But, this was an interesting experiment to see what can happen to a a certain grape"s juice when cellared properly and patience maintained.

It also shows that, patience in collecting wine, leads to corks being popped later than it should have been.
And, being a newbie to this CellerTracker community will reduce the opportunities for that to happen.

This time, it was purposeful. Others in my past, was neglect and pride of knowing more. It's been an expensive mistake, and not in a financial sense, but in a sense of missing out on drinking some of the world's greatest wines!

The lesson... Pop the cork, in a reasonable and measured time, before it's too late.

At opening-
Intensity is pale with a garnet centre and tawny rim+.
Nose is light, earthiness, dried fruit, wet leaves, with a hint of caramel, milk chocolate and licorice.
Palate aligns with the nose, showing aged fruit, nothing primary at this age.
Dry. High tangy acid, medium tannin, medium alcohol, medium/full body, 30+ second finish

Very good quality for a 61 year old wine, though it's drinking window is a furlong or ten over due!

But, there's still tannins resolving, and alcohol, but also a little reduction or oxidation as well.

It's hard to give this an overall grade when I've never had this experience before.
But, I guess that in itself is what this is all about.
So, I'll give it a 90, though I did a tasting of far better, " in there moment" wines last night.

*** This 90 points reflects the fact that this can still be consumed after 61 years! It's remarkable.
(But, if I were to rate the wine as is, with the flaws I've levered on the wine, it should be higher.
If I taste it now, with how it actually tastes, with all it's flaws, it would be lower.)


PS- Drink the Rainbow!
PSS- with this sample, the Rainbow ends at some point. So test...and drink often!
Pop the cork!

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