My wife and I had some guests at our home, and we opened up a 2001 Casa de la Ermita, which is a Petit Verdot from the Jumilla wine region. (Not familiar to me at the time of purchase, Jumilla is southwest of Valencia. Spain, after all, has a few score of DOCs.) When we first served it to our guests it was just okay, and it hadn't opened up.
I left this wine out overnight and for some reason the following
morning decided to use the good old pump and, using vacuum pressure,
wanted to see if I could get more life out of it. I left it in the
fridge over two weeks, a point in time where wine starts to become too
oxidized or acidic (okay, that's an understatement--it makes you want
to hurl).
Surprisingly the wine opened up beautifully--there were pronounced cinnamon and curry notes. Petit verdot is native to Bordeaux and is typically a mxing grape, so its use in Spain is unusual. It is a very tannic varietal, which clearly helped, but it withstood some not-quite-so-wine-friendly conditions and emerged a star.
Amazing!
Posted by: Pursuit | July 30, 2008 at 07:21 PM