. . . is my basement. By far it is not an ideal storage area for my little collection since temperature is often a challenge but it’s the best I have. For our wedding we received a great refrigerated Cuisinart Wine Cellar (gee, guess who had put THAT on the registry) but it only holds 6 bottles which leaves another 70 or so in the rack downstairs. My husband suggested that we invest in a larger, temperature controlled storage option but they can be very expensive. The test: tasting one of the more delicate wines in the basement rack that has been there for many years and see how it’s fared the warmth. At least we have total control over the humidity down there.
Tonight’s guinea pig was a Laurel Lake Vineyards 2003 Pinot Noir Reserve from North Fork, Long Island, NY. Visually this was no youngin’, with wide rim variations from garnet in the center to rust to orange to salmon to amber on the edge. Clear and day bright. The nose was nowhere to be found for a moment, but after letting it get comfortable in the glass for a minute or two it smelled clean with assertive maraschino cherries, pomegranate, red plum, some dried cherries, walnut, pecan pie, mulling spices and spiced apple. The palate was a little shyer, only telling me red cherry, red plum, spiced apple, and cherry pie. Enjoyable but I can’t help but wonder if maybe it is just on a quiet year in the process. Good thing I have a second bottle to open later! My only complaint about this wine was that the 12.5% alcohol felt more like 14.5% to me. Otherwise it was dry, the acidity was high, no significant oak, medium intensity nose & palate, medium bodied, mellow/gentle tannins, medium finish and medium complexity. I liked it. This might be tough to pair right now because most of the foods I’m thinking of that could pair with a Pinot Noir would overstep the soft-spoken nature of this particular Pinot. Maybe we’ll see what the other bottle says in a year or two. Or more likely it was best when I bought. That’s the exciting part of aging wine — we’ll see what happens!
A note on aging to those who don’t normally do it deliberately: the wine needs to have certain structural elements such as higher acidity, some tannins, residual sugar (for sweets), a degree of complexity, etc. otherwise they may not stand up to the changes age affects on a wine. These are not absolutes but certainly important factors. One consistent thing all of my teachers at the CIA imparted upon us was that wine is a living thing. Once the wine goes into a bottle and is corked up, it becomes an individual with its own lifespan and uniqueness. It continues to evolve forever. The world inside that bottle is a living environment. Without the backbone & complexity to grow into something interesting that wine won’t necessarily stop changing, it just may morph into something not so good. But ideally wherever you store your wine you want to make sure there is a little humidity but not too much (so the corks don’t get moldy or dry out), temperature regulated to about 55 to 65 degrees, as little light as possible, and as little vibration as possible. If all you have is a closet in your apartment, use that. Now remember, a hearty Cabernet Sauvignon will not show the same way in 5 yrs as a Pinot Noir or a Pinot Gris/Grigio. 5 years is NOT a long time. When you want to talk about truly mature wine we can look back to 1969 or 1933 or something . . . although older wines become increasingly harder to find since much of the wine we drink today is meant to be drunk today, or people just don’t have the patience.
So maybe we could still use a real-deal wine storage cabinet but so far it seems that I’m not cooking or oxidizing my wine. Guess I’ll just have to try more and see!
