WTN: Fallen Flavors - Tales from the Crypt

[David M. Bueker]

Opening some forgotten bottles from my late father’s cellar

2004 Barboursville Vineyards Cabernet Franc Reserve
Tastes better than it smells. Unfortunately it smells like fetid pond water.

2005 Montueil-La Levade Côtes du Rhône Vieilles Vignes
Smells worse than the Barboursville. The best/worst description is fully fermented rotted cabbage. DNPIM.

1999 Behrens & Hitchcock Cabernet Sauvignon Alder Springs Vineyard
Purple plastic cork, but it’s not completely oxidized. Instead it has reduced to kirsch flavored lighter fluid with an acid streak a mile wide. How the heck did they get an Alder Springs Cab to 14.8% alcohol in 1999?

1999 Chateau St. Jean Merlot
Alas that this was not opened ten years ago. It would have been perfectly nice, if not profound. Today it’s a faded memory of a missed experience.

[Jenise]

Your stories of these wines, however brief, are always poignant. You and your dad were so close and shared the bond of wine, so even the lousy bottles are meaningful.

[David M. Bueker]

Sometimes there are multiples of the lousy bottles.

[David M. Bueker]

The Chateau St. Jean wing of the crypt is still full. Dad left a whole lot of bottles beyond their expiration date.

2002 Chateau St. Jean Chardonnay Reserve
Brown. Really…brown. Still shows all the oak though, so there’s that!

2010 Chateau St. Jean Sauvignon Blanc ‘La Petite Etoile’
Damn, dad should have opened this in 2019. It still had memories of when it was a good wine. Not my thing, but it clearly was good wine at one time.

[David M. Bueker]

1999 Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Pinot Gris Vieilles Vignes
Underneath the veil of dirty mushrooms was a perfectly correct, aged, sweet Pinot Gris. That dirty mushroom element was evil.

2003 King Family Vineyards Late Harvest Viognier ‘Loreley’
Did I expect anything from this 21 year old botrytis affected Virginia wine? No? I still got less than I expected. It was clearly bad wine. It was in fact so bad that it was impossible to put into words exactly how it was bad.

Viognier + botrytis is not a combination I'd have thought of. I have trouble imagining what the combination of peonies and shoe polish would smell like.

-Paul W.

[David M. Bueker]

• 2000 Château Beau-Site - France, Bordeaux, Médoc, St. Estèphe (10/28/2024)
  From my late father's cellar, this was opened as a 2000, 2003, 2005 Beau-Site check-in. Not surprisingly this was the most fragile of the three wines - fully mature and in need of near term drinking. It was still enjoyable, just getting a little thin around the edges. Nothing oxidative or remotely funereal, just probably time to focus on yelling at clouds.
  
• 2003 Château Beau-Site - France, Bordeaux, Médoc, St. Estèphe (10/28/2024)
  From my late father's cellar, this was part of a 2000, 2003, 2005 Beau-Site check-in. More depth than the 2000 that preceded it, this did not show any roasted character, just a plummy rather than cassis fruit, and the structure was still suffused beneath the fruit. Light to medium bodies despite the hot vintage, I was quite happy having a glass of this with dinner. Drink over the next 3-5 years.
  
• 2005 Château Beau-Site - France, Bordeaux, Médoc, St. Estèphe (10/28/2024)
  From my late father's cellar, this was part of a 2000, 2003, 2005 Beau-Site check-in. Not surprisingly, this was the strongest of the three in terms of both remaining good drinking, and overall balance. Classic Bordeaux fruit/tannin structure, cassis and a touch of cedar, and just a hint of tobacco on the finish made this a promising showing. Another half glass later on was just as good, so not worried about holding this a while longer if necessary.

[David M. Bueker]

• 2001 Balgownie Estate Shiraz - Australia, Victoria, Central Victoria, Bendigo (10/28/2024)
  From my late father's cellar, he still had several bottles of this, so I decided to open one to check it out. With zero knowledge of this wine I had zero expectations, and this time I was happily surprised. Still quite fruity, though not to the point of jamminess, this had backbone, as well as some leathery elements coming through on the finish. Seems like it has a ways to go yet, so I have time to either drink these and/or find a friend to share them.

The only St. Jean wines that go long haul are the sweet Rieslings. I still have some 78 and 82 half bottles - they eventually go brownish rather than amber, but seem to retain their interesting flavours almost indefinitely.

One of them has the longest wine name I can recall: "1978 Chateau St. Jean Johannisberg Riesling Individual Dried Bunch Selected Late Harvest Belle Terre Vineyard"

IDBSLH = Trockenbeerenauslese. It isn't very often that an English term is more of a jaw-cracker than its German equivalent.

-Paul W.

[David M. Bueker]

The only St. Jean wines that go long haul are the sweet Rieslings. I still have some 78 and 82 half bottles - they eventually go brownish rather than amber, but seem to retain their interesting flavours almost indefinitely.

One of them has the longest wine name I can recall: "1978 Chateau St. Jean Johannisberg Riesling Individual Dried Bunch Selected Late Harvest Belle Terre Vineyard"

Actually a bunch of the Cinq Cepage Cabernet Sauvignon blends are doing just fine at 20-30+ years of age.

I've run across a few of the Behrens & Hitchcock wines under plastic cork, and similar reaction- surprisingly wine isn't especially oxidized, but unsurprisingly it sucks anyway!
Enjoy the notes, even if you don't enjoy the wines!

[David M. Bueker]

• 1998 Pahlmeyer Proprietary Red - USA, California, Napa Valley (10/30/2024)
  From my late father's cellar. Dad bought a half dozen bottles of this from the winery on release. Somehow he never drank any of them.
  
  Given the larger-scaled style these wines were never in my wheelhouse, but the vintage put a damper on the ripeness, and kept this in check. Dark, supple raspberry fruit and oak were the first things to come through, with more developed aromas (earthy, cedar) later. I expected a more luscious mouthfeel, but age and the vintage resulted in a balanced, evolving, but not yet mature profile that has we welcoming rather than dreading the other five bottles in the cellar.