Good Things Come to Those Who Cellar

It’s always interesting to discuss cellaring wine — and all the pros and cons associated with it.

We’ve talked recently about the importance of staying on top of your collection, and how it’s easy to let older bottles slip through the cracks in favour of the newer, shinier toys.

You could almost call this blog “The Importance of Keeping on Top of Your Cellar Part 2” as this illustrates the moral of the story in an exciting ROI type of light.

Most of the bottles that come into our homes are consumed within a year or two — if not that very night.   However, we do have small, but growing, collections of a handful of wines that date as far back as the 90’s.

All wines we store with the intention of enjoying later (no matter if that’s one year or 10 years down the road) get the royal treatment of being laid on their sides in a temperature and humidity controlled wine fridge.   If you don’t have one, no matter, an out of the way corner in the basement, under the stairs or in a closet is fine.  Just try to keep the heat and light to fairly constant — and fairly low.

This week we’ve enjoyed a few of those bottles that we tucked away years ago for a rainy day … and as this week’s rainy day was Erin’s birthday, we pulled them out so she could drink away her aging woes.

The first bottle we cracked open was a 2003 Mission Hill SLC Syrah VQA Okanagan Valley.  We picked up a couple bottles of this top-tier wine when we visited the BC winery back in 2006.  Even then, when the wine was only three years old, it was showing so beautifully — ripe black fruits, hints of smoke and meatiness, that we each eagerly dolled out $45 for a bottle.

About a year after that trip, we opened Courtney’s bottle, and much to our disappointment, the rich, ripe flavours we loved were now muted and dull, the nose that we remembered to be so fragrant was closed and tight … in short the wine was a tortured shell of what it should have been and a huge disappointment for us.
Slightly panicked about what was in store for Erin’s bottle, it was left untouched in her cellar, pushed to the back as other bottles came and went (many of them other Mission Hill products like the sensational chardonnay Perpetua and Bordeaux blend Quatrain).

Finally, and admittedly a bit hesitantly, Erin dusted off the SLC and brought it to a family dinner this week to be served alongside roast beef tenderloin in a wild mushroom sauce.

If the bottle was opened with some trepidation, there was no need.  It was truly one of the most impressive bottles we’ve had in a while.  An exceptionally complex and elegant wine, the nose showed fresh thyme, ripe blackberry and plum fruit, a meaty horseyness and interestingly, a Double Bubble spearmint note.  The palate was rich and round with soft tannins, flavours of fresh thyme and rosemary herbs, barnyard meatiness, a hint of smoke and juicy, ripe blackberry.  Served alongside our roast beef dinner, it was exceptional.

We’re not sure what happened to Courtney’s bottle, we think it may have been going through a bit of a “dumb” phase, but we were quite happy with the mid term aging nine years brought to Erin’s bottle, and while it could have gone for another few years, we don’t think much more could be gained from further aging.

At the same dinner we also cracked open a 1997 Chateau Ducru-Beaucalliou, from St. Julien.  A second growth (St. Julien has no first growth wines), this was a very pleasant and tasty wine, indeed, filled with all the typical Bordeaux flavours of freshly sharpened lead pencil, cassis, autumn leaves and grey clay.

While it’s very rare for us to shell out over $100 for a bottle of wine, for us, this was a great celebration wine that we were happy to drink, and happy we opened it when we did, as it was still very fresh – and had yet to develop those tertiary flavours that are less enjoyable to us.

It was certainly good fortune that we opened both bottles at a prime age and didn’t wait, as in a few more years, they may have begun to fade. And that can easily happen — especially as collections grow.  So make it a habit to go through your collection every once in a while.  It should be a pleasant enough activity and see what you’ve got kicking around, and when you open up a bottle that’s aged perfectly, you can give yourself a pat on the back for a serious return on investment.