Date: 20-Aug-2005 16:56
Author: Howie Hart Email
Subject: TN: Chateau Villemaurine - 1967
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This is the wine my friend found at his mother-in-law's home that I posted last week. I arrived at Walt & Laura's at 7PM last night to "help" them with this bottle (I'm very charitable this way). The bottle had been standing upright for several hours and quite a bit of sediment was visible in the bottom, so I decided to decant. When inserting the cork screw, the cork seemed to be the softest cork I have ever encountered - giving almost no resistance as I turned it in. The cork was removed in 2 parts after it broke in two. Examination of the cork revealed that much wine had soaked into the cork as there were red streaks through the cork, which seems to indicate that it had been dried out and re-wetted. As I decanted the wine, the color was orangish-brown, indicating oxidation. A very nice dinner was served - munchoids of cheeses, marinated olives, mild Italian sausage followed by yellow and red tomatoes with EVOO and fresh mozarella, buttered red skin baby potatoes and pot roast. In the glass, the wine was evidently over the hill - very little bouquet, no evident fruit and hints of coffee, but it was surprisingly drinkable - soft tannins and acidity and it seemed to improve as the meal continued. I was expecting the worst and hoping for the best. This wine should have been consumed 20-30 years ago, but I was impressed that it wasn't totally DOA, indicating the resiliency of the wine to survive (barely) all those years of bad storage. As a backup, I brought along a bottle of NOTL Rief Estate 2001 Cab Franc, which was sound, but youngish. We drank that also. Dessert was berries in a cream sauce, which we accompanied with the last remaining Ice Wine that Alana Wolf brought to NiagaraCOOL (stord in the fridge for the past 2 weeks). Very pleasant evening and an interesting wine experience.

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