Cooking class

I went up to the Russian River Valley on Sunday and picked up a couple of cases of wine, then ate dinner at Dry Creek Kitchen in Healdsburg.
Everything was wonderful until I went back to my car after dinner and discovered that somewhere in Healdsburg, I had dropped my car key. I retraced steps, went back to the restaurant, etc., but no key anywhere.
I called AAA but they couldn't find a locksmith on Sunday night, and the tow guy in Healdsburg didn't have a truck that could tow me home.
So I got a motel and pondered my options. The only way I could see was to rent a car in the morning and drive home, get the spare key, drive back to Healdsburg and get my car. I didn't have a spare tucked away because I couldn't find a reasonably secure, externally accessible, metal attachment point for a spare key container.
So that's what I did. The earliest I could get a car on Monday wasn't until about 10:30. It was a nice warm day in Healdsburg.
By the time I drove home, got the key, and got back to Healdsburg, it was 3:15 in the afternoon, and about 83 degrees.
On the way home, the low tire pressure indicator came on. The car has no spare, the tires are "run flat", and so I just came home.
So now I have a couple of dozen bottles of probably cooked wine.
I've opened the two that had obviously pushed-up corks. Joseph Swan Laguna Ridge Zin '00, undrinkable. Hook & Ladder unoaked Chardonnay '08, undrinkable.

The rest are marked, and I'll open them ASAP, each one with a backup. Who knows, I might get lucky with a bottle or two.

And I went and bought 4 new tires, not the run-flats that have lost air 4 times in two years. Another $1000. Life goes on.

John

Sorry about the wine AND the tires.
83 for couple hours might not be SO bad, but of course greenhouse effect with windows means interior much hotter (and not usually great separation between inside and trunk)
I am a little surprised they were already undrinkable, but hard to predict these things

It's a little 2-seat hatchback - there's no separation at all between the cockpit and the storage (unless you count a "windowshade". The car was parked under a tree, which helped in the morning, but when I got in (finally!) it was HOT inside.
So far, I've only opened the two bottles with obviously pushed corks. Sadly, the Swan was a total loss. I could have managed the Hook & Ladder chard, but it would have been marginal. It was sort of like a light sherry.

It's life, and I'll survive. I still have to find a viable hidey-hole for a key. I looked again today and didn't find any spot that would survive more than a minute or two in Oakland, let alone New York!

John

I tried another bottle tonight, one that I was very worried about. (I was also worried about the Swan library wines. ) This was Yoakim Bridge PN '08, and they only have a couple of cases left. Fortunately, this bottle was fine.
I kept looking for something wrong, and wondering whether it was just ripeness or heat, and so forth, but while I was cooking pork tenderloin medallions in a Dijon cream sauce, it was excellent, and with the meal, it was fine too.
I have a couple of bottles that were duplicates of wines already in my cellar. I think it'll be instructive to open them in pairs. Of course I need to have enough other wine idiots around to enjoy the endless analytical trivia.

John

How about opening the cooked wines for those friends who don't care what they drink...

a couple of dozen bottles of probably cooked wine....Joseph Swan Laguna Ridge Zin '00, undrinkable

How about you forget a bottle for 5 years, then open it and see? Just a theory

>> for those friends who don't care what they drink...
I care what I drink!!!

>> How about you forget a bottle for 5 years, then open it and see?
It's my understanding that damaged bottles don't fix themselves. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong! In any case, it'll take me a year or more to go through these, even if I open them as often as I reasonably can.

John

I dug out another threatened bottle yesterday - Joseph Swan Lone Redwood Vineyard Zin '01 - and opened it.
It was touched by the heat, you could detect a bit of that sherry character, but mostly it was fine. The sherry blew off after half an hour or so, and the next day the wine was just a mature Zin. This was the sixth bottle of this particular wine that I've opened, and according to my rather helter-skelter notes, it fit right in with the parade. (The notes below are unedited)

4/08: Beautiful! Light color, like a good Chianti, but a rich Zin nose. Just a taste of some tannin or wood in the background. September berries with the feeling of a brown California hillside. I didn't notice the alcohol at all. Bought at the winery 15.3% alcohol
2/10: Fully mature, deceptively mild in taste, still blackberry Zin but neither alcohol nor tannin show at all. Excellent! Bought at the winery 15.3% alcohol
5/10: Wasn't cooked! A bit reticent on opening, fairly dark color, feeling a bit mature, but still good Zin character and just a bit of tannins. * MAY BE COOKED 15.3% alcohol Bought at the winery

John

John
As to hiding a spare key...I say forget about the magnetic little boxes. Carefully clean off a spot on one of the hidden surfaces of your bumpers and tape the key there with several layers of duct tape. I always apply some grease to it to prevent rust. You'll thank yourself for this next time.

I am a little surprised they were already undrinkable, but hard to predict these things

Mt thoughts as well, Dale. I'd set the btls aside for a few weeks and THEN go back and try them. Pushed corks (unless they're pushed
completely out of the btl) are not something that usually strike fear into my heart, just mild concern.
Such a brief exposure to high heat is not going to transform a red wine into an aldhydic sherry. That takes months of heat to do.
Tom

Bob,
I took another look around the car for a key-hiding place, and the only thing I could come up with is under the hood just in front of the windshield. The bumpers are plastic panels covering the actual bumper structure on my 2008 BMW Z4, and there are no crevices around there that are both hidden and reasonably accessible.

John

Nice car John. And it probably has one of those very expensive electronic ignition keys that really isn't a key but a device, eh? Can you get under the hood with the car locked? I'd still look for a ledge of some kind underneath the body to tape to, even though you may have to lie on the ground to get to it. If the key's electronic I'd wrap it in plastic to moisture proof it. I've never trusted the magnetic "hide-a-key." Life used to be a lot simpler.

>> Nice car John.
Yeah, I think so, too. And it's amazingly nicer after, pissed off as I was over all this foofaraw, I dropped a grand on a set of non-"run-flat" tires. I admit that the flat tire got me 100 miles home (and I ignored the 55 MPH stricture), but the new tires are SO much grippier, and SO MUCH easier to feel when I go around a corner at a speed that I wouldn't use if I hadn't been looking at the surroundings for lurkers!

>> very expensive electronic ignition keys that really isn't a key but a device, eh?
Well, it's actually a key, but it's very expensive anyway - after all, it has the BMW logo on it. It's one of the variety that has a wiggly groove on each side, rather than "teeth".

>> Can you get under the hood with the car locked?
No, but I can get a fair distance under the windshield end with the hood closed, and with the hood up, I can do a good mounting job.
It isn't fully electronic, but it does have all the lock and unlock buttons. Magnets in the sense of the little magnetic boxes shouldn't be a problem.
(Once upon a time, I designed magnetic striped cards - got a patent for one of them, in fact. And later, I designed the mechanics of hard disk drives -- another place where strong magnets are in use.)

I'll keep looking, and meanwhile I think I need to toss another few C-notes toward another key.

John

John,
I cringed when I read about your travails. Did you at any point contemplate taking a rock and smashing the glass windows and rescuing your cargo?

I did, but then I thought, here I am 100 miles from home on Sunday night. Where would I stash the wine? At least it was secure in the car.
Also, at that time, I had hopes of being able to get home and get the key and be back by about noon, or get a friend to bring me the key.

So far it isn't as bad as I feared. Only the first two bottles, the ones with obviously pushed corks (about half an inch for the Swan), were bad. Two more bottles were just fine.

John