Old Plonk

"Freshness is...a critical factor of wine quality, particularly in white," asserts the Stormhoek blog.

So my tongue was cowering at the back of my mouth when V opened a 30-year-old bottle of Navarra last Saturday, a mere cosecha - Señorio de Sarria, 1975. (Viña del Perdon)

I had picked up the bottle in a musty old wine merchant in the Huertas district of Madrid some three years ago, mainly as a curiosity, but also because the label sported the name of one of our favourite old towns in the north: Puente la Reina. I did however exchange emails with the vineyard afterwards, and was duly reassured that it would still be quoffable once uncorked.

Screwtops were unheard of back then. Ditto synthetic corks - which is a pity because this one had no intention of coming out in one tug.

Freshness was certainly not one of this wine's main attributes. In colour it was almost port-like; unusually for a tempranillo. Yet it was nowhere near as unpalatable as it had appeared when first decanted. After a few minutes with its surface exposed to air molecules it began to unfurl some of its antique complexities. The ideal accompaniment in fact for that dish of left-overs forgotten at the back of the fridge.

Alternatively a nice bottle of ripe LiDL's Navarra costs just £2.99, but offers no Alhambra-like prism for those meditations on mortality and the inevitable decrepitude of bliss.