So, this week’s Noble Writ post was a late Monday night creation (really, early Tuesday morning). Why? Well, it wasn’t (for once) that I hadn’t gotten around to doing my reasearch or buying my wine. I was way ahead of where I usually am – in fact the post was mostly written except for the tasting note of the featured wine.
When I got home from work, I chilled the bottle down for a few minutes (my passive cellar is above optimum at the moment) and got ready to write. Once I opened the bottle, I thought there might be a problem. It wasn’t corked, but it was very muted. I decided to give it some air and some time and see if it came around. It seemed to be opening up a bit (the power of hope is strong . . .), so I gave it a taste. Wowza. Entirely unpleasant – no fruit, lots of painful structure and very sour.
Now, if this was the first time I’d had wine from this producer, I would have totally turned off. However, I’ve probably had three cases of wine from them over the years, and all the rest have been fine. A bad bottle can happen to anyone, so, I returned the bottle to the store, which was still open for a few minutes, for another, and (thankfully) picked up some bottles for future columns.
However, the second bottle was flawed too. Not as badly as the first, but badly enough that there was no way I was going to write about the wine, and then have folks plunk down $24 on my recommendation and have a negative experience. So, I had to come up with an entirely new topic. And write a column about it. A frustrating experience, but it gave me a chance to dip into a topic near and dear to my heart – Riesling – and to be able to recommend a wine that was both terrific, and a wonderful value.
