Over the course of many, many meals at home during this long siege of Covid, I’ve been winnowing down my collection of older wines. Over the years, I’ve tried to keep some sort of track of what wines I have, but I am not really a very orderly type, and some things just got away from me. Occasionally this has produced a nasty shock, when I’d discover that a wine I really wanted to drink now had apparently been drunk long ago by an unremembering me.
Very occasionally, the shock has been a pleasant one, as when, recently, looking for a wine for a belated holiday dinner with friends, at the bottom of a nearly depleted bin I discovered two dusty bottles of Bonneau du Martray Grand Cru Corton 2000 – perfect accompaniments for the boned and rolled fresh ham Diane was roasting for that fête. Serendipity!
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Some of my regular readers may recall that back in September 2021 I opened a bottle of 2001 Bonneau du Martray Corton for that month’s cellar selection. Really attentive readers may even recall there was a bit of drama about the condition of the cork and whether the wine would be sound. (It was.)
Well, those who don’t learn from history are bound to repeat it, so I once again had my bit of drama. After I wiped a healthy layer of dust from the two bottles, I began carefully drawing the corks. The first bottle cooperated beautifully: the cork came out smoothly, and the wine smelled wonderfully fresh, still fruity and live. The second bottle, which had lain in identical conditions by the first one’s side for all these years, was a very different story. Its cork looked sound, but when I began to try to ease it out, the top quarter-inch pulled away from the rest of the cork, which proceeded to crumble to pieces. What I could sniff of the wine in the bottle was no more reassuring than the condition of the cork. No serendipity this time.
A combination of curiosity and parsimony made me not discard that bottle but set it aside, lightly covered. I also kept a decanter and filtering wine funnel handy, though I selected a backup bottle should that second Corton prove as dead as I feared it was. I would leave it up to our guests whether, for science (science is a stern mistress) they wanted to try a taste of it or not.
Well, dinnertime came, and we six started with a pureed cauliflower-and-leek soup – a nice wintry dish – accompanied by an absolutely gorgeous bottle of 2013 Zind Humbrecht Clos Windsbuhl Hunawhir Pinot Gris. I really must do a post about Alsace Pinot Gris sometime soon: the characteristically rich aroma and the complex, deep fruit of this wine set a very high bar for my 21-year-old Corton to match.
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Well, the first bottle of Corton cleared that hurdle easily. It was wonderfully smooth and elegant in the mouth, with delightful fresh berryish scents, and a palate of similar fresh fruit flavors, mingled with more mature meaty sweetnesses and foresty notes. Just a fine wine, which was very quickly consumed by the assembled multitude.
This of course led to the question of Bottle #2, which, given how fine #1 had been, was no question at all: Curiosity prevailed. I filtered and decanted it, poured it around, and awaited judgment as we all judiciously swirled, sniffed, and sipped. No one spat.
It wasn’t dead. It wasn’t corked. Weakened, yes. Paler in color, much lighter in aroma, and more delicate in taste than the first Corton, but definitely still alive. To me, it tasted at least ten years older than its sibling, but if we had drunk it first we wouldn’t have been disappointed. We would probably have called it charming – not overwhelming, but in no way bad.
This was a very, very illuminating demonstration of just how much difference a cork can make in a potentially superb wine. How long the world’s supply of first-rate cork will last is yet one more environmental problem. Worry, worry, worry.
Tom's Wine Line 