A Wine Review With a Moral

I take inventory of my wine collection every so often to check for bottles nearing maturity or to simply re-acquaint myself with my collection. I was in the mood for a Bordeaux blend to compliment a cool spring night so I pulled out a 2001 Lancaster Estate Estate Bottled Red Wine. That year was a banner vintage for Northern California wines and my recent tastings of other wines from that crop proved that the reds were just cresting their peak of maturity. The $50 I paid when it was released seemed a distant memory and I was reminded of the joys of delayed gratification.

The wine poured like a typical Bordeaux blend, a deep purplish-red. The nose was a bit deceiving, as happens with age. The longer it spent in the decanter the more subtleties emerged. At first, there was spiciness, the typical oak byproduct of the Cabernet Sauvignon. Then ripe berries emerged, cherries and plums, currants, followed by a slight grassiness, perhaps from the Petit Verdot. The taste was very similar to the bouquet, with the addition of a slight creaminess. There was a bit more oak in this than is usual for Bordeaux blends, which made for a rich, extra long finish. Overall, this was a wine with quite a few complexities worth coaxing out. To express it in a more poetic way, this wine was a walk through a rainy English rose garden with a basket of berries, following the scent of a distant goddess baking a spiced torte, then realizing that you’ve been walking for years. How’s that?

So here’s the twist followed by the moral:

I went on Snooth.com to find out what other people thought about this wine. Their 3.5 out of 5 rating wasn’t what surprised me. I absolutely lost it when I saw that this bottle was going for $900!!! Now, I know enough about the wine world to know these things happen, often actually. But as much as I enjoyed the wine, I would never think of paying that much money for it. It’s absolutely ridiculous. And I drank it on an average night for no reason other than being in search of a decent drinking experience. Luckily, I almost always get two bottles of the wines I choose. It’s the best advice that was ever given to me, and which I intend to propagate here. You never know when a bottle will end up tainted by bad cork or uneven cellaring. This may seem outrageous, buying two of the same exact thing, but take my word for it; you’ll only have to fall back on that second bottle once to appreciate the advice. By the way, I’m not giving that $900 price tag too much credence until I confirm it with a wine merchant. But for now, that last bottle is sitting cool and pretty.