Preparing to send a bottle of this wine to my friend Mr. Ross, I refrigerated a bottle for our own meal later that day.
Though it's ostensibly from the same stash (bought a bottle, loved it, went back and bought the last three) as my first, this isn't quite the same wine. The heady bouquet of strawberries was gone leaving just a bit of bitter herb, and the wine had a pronounced vinegar note that either grew as the wine went on or simply grew in my mind as I focussed on the flaw. The conversation here about yeasts and controlling SO2 played in my head, and the memories of the cloudy, stinky bottles of past vintages (cloudy, sour) came back vividly. This isn't that same flaw, but all might be SO2 related.
So I went back to my notes and counted the soldiers, and I'm two hits for three misses. Or 60% bad bottles which is an unacceptably high rate of failure. Is it actually possible to get good bottles of this wine with any frequency outside of New York City?