Why We Love(d) the 90's

A few weeks ago I visited Indiana with my boyfriend and we raided his dad's wine cellar. His dad had managed to get himself on a bunch of coveted wine lists in the 80s and 90s and still has a lot to show for it. Now a diabetic, he doesn't drink wine as much as he used to, so he said we could put together a couple cases and bring them back to California with us. I've been lucky enough to sample some of these cellar treasures, including Ridge from the 80s and Leonetti from the 90s. It is always a gamble with older wines - you never know how they will keep. This basement wine cellar that we raided is not actually a wine cellar at all - it's a boiler room. So every time we open one of these bottles, the cork crumbles, we dismantle it in pieces, push in what we can't get out, and usually end up decanting and sometimes passing the wine through a coffee filter (into a coffee pot if we've run out of decanters). The wine may be oxidized, it may have lost all its fruit. Or it may be amazing, complex, funky, silky, and downright delicious. Here are a few winners from the latest collection:

 Leonetti Cellars 1992 Select Walla Walla Valley, Washington

The components of this wine are unknown, but I suspected it was a Merlot/Cab Sauv blend. It was gorgeous, fruity, spicy and chewy, with no oxidation and a beautiful richness.

Newton 1990 Merlot Napa Valley, California

This wine wasn't as clean as the previous but still had a lot of fruit and spice to go with the funk.

Chateau Phelan Segur 1990 Saint-Estephe, Bordeaux, France

This 1990 Bordeaux, which is dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon in the blend, still had a lot of fruit, plus richness and complexity that is so typically Bordeaux. I've learned through my tasting and study that really good Bordeaux needs at least 10 years to be drinkable, at least to my liking (the tannin needs time to calm down) and this was a perfect example. Blackberry, leather, barnyard, and dried fruit mingled with a surprising acidity (that calmed down after being open for a day) and tannin that suggested we could have waited a bit longer to open it, but not too much longer. 

A. Rafanelli 1991 Zinfandel Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma County, California

I tried this wine after it being open for a day, and it was pretty oxidized, but it still had a bit of fruit and spice and was drinkable. Jeremy said it was much better the first day.

Both of these last two bottles had been leaking, which was why we decided to open them. You can see how the bottle tops are kind of moldy and icky. 

All of these wines threw a lot of sediment, as can be expected in older wines, and the 1990 Bordeaux also left tartrate crystals behind, which is from the acidity precipitating out. 

We were just saying that we should probably get some cheap Tuesday night wine to drink so we are not opening interesting and potentially amazing 20-year old bottles on a whim, but really, we are opening the bottles from Indiana assuming they are bad from the storage conditions, but hoping they will surprise us. So far so good! Thanks again, Jeff.