Video Transcript: Wine Cellar Management - How Long is too Long?
Written By: Anonymous on Fri, Oct 17th 2008
Brian Freedman: Welcome to Classic Wines TV, I am your host Brian Freedman. Today, continuing our discussion of how to build a great wine collection I would like to discuss a category of wine that a lot of people - how do we want to say this, they screw up with. A lot of times we have wine that's been sitting there in the cellar, evolving for a couple of years, the tendency is to want to pop that cork right away. It's not always best to do so. Today we have a bottle that could still use more time.
Now, this is a great example of a bottle that, though its a little bit older, its still not quite ready yet. Now, this whole idea of a wine being ready or not ready is, to a great extent, a matter of personal preference. But I had the fortune of trying this wine about a month or so ago, and its just not quite expressing itself as fully as I believe it will in another, let's say, two to four years or so. I wouldn't want to wait until this wine was too old, but at the same time I really think that it needs another couple of years for those tannins to release their death grip on the fruit, and I really think that this wine is going to just become effusive; much more interesting, even than it is right now.
Let's talk specifically about this wine. This is the Domaine Jamet 2001 Cote-Rotie; this is from the Northern Rhône Valley in France. Domaine Jamet is one of those producers that wine people go crazy over, we fawn all over them.
Now, I don't want you to think that just because the wine geeks love this stuff in general that its a terribly easy wine to get to know. The way I would describe this one based on my tasting of it a couple of months ago, kind of like licking a campfire with some beef jerky stuck between your molars, but in a good way. It's that whole idea of tasting the earth, tasting the terroir. This one is all about those deep, funky, meaty, peppery, earthy, characteristics that you look for in Northern Rhône Syrah.
I absolutely love this wine, and though its tempting to pop open this bottle right now, I know from past experience that it will just keep on getting better if I put it back in the cellar, forget about it for a couple of years, and give it some time to evolve.
Again, the great thing about having a wine cellar; especially if you buy a couple of bottles of each wine, the great thing is you can actually follow their evolution, because you have the proper storage environment to really maximize the evolution of a bottle.
Remember, this wine and the other wines we discuss here on Classic Wines TV are all available on classicwines.com. Until next time, or until I open up this beautiful bottle, I am your host Brian Freedman, cheers!
