Tuesday, November 29, 2005

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.

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