Time in a (Wine) Bottle 2

Photo of a tweet by Anna Kendrick that says "That bottle of wine that you have in case of a 'special occasion' and how 7pm starts to feel real 'special' when you got no other booze."

This tweet from @AnnaKendrick47 answers the question of when we should drink our “special” bottles of wine! This twitter account has 4.7 million followers, so I am inclined to believe it is the real Anna Kendrick. No wonder I like her, despite the Pitch Perfect movies.

What makes a wine special, and when should we drink those special bottles?

You do not have to be a wine collector to have a collection of wine. We may think of the “serious” wine collector as someone with several hundred to several thousand bottles of wine preserved in some climate controlled space in a specially-designed room or a series of multi-thousand dollar specialty wine refrigerators.

But I also know a lot of people who have just ten or twenty bottles of wine in a rack from Bed, Bath and Beyond that they keep in the basement.

These many types of wine collections, regardless of their size, have one thing in common. Almost all collections include at least one special bottle of wine. By special, I mean a bottle that has particular meaning to its owner. That meaning may derive from how the bottle was obtained, as a wedding gift, a bequest or a bottle brought back from a weekend drive to a local winery. It may also be that wine itself is rare or highly prized or made by a particularly skilled or famous producer.

In any case, many of us possess wines that have a special meaning.

Wines that are Special to Me

As readers of these pages know, I am a collector of wine. I have a secure, underground temperature- and humidity-controlled storage facility custom built deep in the bowels of our basement. It is nearly universal that when people see the cellar or pictures of it, they ask how many bottles does it hold. That is a number that is never spoken out loud. Just as I have no need to know how many pairs of shoes, or watches, or purses Julie has acquired, there is no need for her to know exactly how many bottles of wine are in our cellar. And since she is my editor extraordinaire, she would definitely see the number if I wrote it here. Let us just say it is probably above the average, and large enough to contain a number of bottles I think of as special. These are a few of those special wines.

Photo of a bottle of 1989 Far Niente Napa Cabernet.

The 1989 Far Niente Oakville (Napa) Cabernet Sauvignon. This is my gateway wine.

1989 Far Niente Cabernet Sauvignon, Oakville, California. The Far Niente is special to me because it was the wine that began what is now a nearly 25-year adventure with wine, and it is a discovery that Julie and I made together.

We were having an anniversary dinner in the early 1990s at the Refectory, one of Columbus, Ohio’s finest fine dining restaurants with a perennial position on Wine Spectator’s list of top wine restaurants. We were novices and placed ourselves in the hands of Michael Melching who was managing the wine program. Michael recommended the 1989 Far Niente, and we were knocked out. It was the first time I realized how deep, complex and beautiful a wine could be.

Far Niente is located in the Oakville American Viticultural Area (AVA), a sub-appellation in the heart of the Napa Valley AVA. This wine is a big, fruity, jammy expression of Cabernet Sauvignon that one would expect from the warm conditions of the Oakville AVA, with toasty oak flavors of baking spices and vanilla. Over the years, the fruit has mellowed and this wine has become even better balanced and more beautiful. And while 1991 remains my favorite vintage of Far Niente of the last 25 years, the 1989 will always be special to me because it was our first.

Since that first meeting, Michael has become a very dear friend (wine can do that!). This month he opened Copious, a new restaurant/music venue/event space in Columbus’ Brewery District. Having seen some early versions of the menu and having had the opportunity to walk the space during construction, I am very excited to see it in operation.

2001 Domaine Truchot-Martin “Jacky Truchot” Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru, Burgundy, France. There are thousands of producers in Burgundy, with over 70,000 acres under vine, and I have tasted only a small percentage of them. Of those I have tasted, though, the wines of Jacky Truchot have been among my favorites.

Photo of a bottle of 2001 Jacky Tuchot Grand Cru.

One of the finest Burgundies I have ever tasted, the 2001 Jacky Truchot Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru.

Truchot owned about seven acres in three of the most sought-after communes in the Côte d’Or, one of the most fabled wine growing regions in the world. This special bottle is from one of the 33 Grand Cru vineyards in Burgundy, Charmes-Chambertin. You may recall I once wrote about how quality designations vary in different parts of France. In Burgundy, it is based on the vineyard itself. The very soil in which the grapes are grown determines what level of quality is assigned to the wine, based on a thousand years of experience growing Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in these same locations.

Jacky Truchot was a Pinot Noir grower who practiced old world grape growing and wine making. Allen Meadows, known as the Burghound for his many years studying and teaching about the wines and winemakers of Burgundy, wrote, “The wines of Truchot-Martin are a kind of a stylistic throw back to older times. There is no artifice here at all. No cold maceration, no enzymes, no commercial yeasts, no fining, no filtration and not much new oak – even the label is old style; about the only concession to modern times is that there are no stems.” Truchot was unique, producing wines that were distinct from just about everything else being produced in the region.

With no manipulation whatsoever, the Truchot Charmes-Chambertin is utterly expressive of the place and the time the grapes were grown. Truchot’s wines take years to develop in the bottle and feature a gorgeous wet-earth Burgundian funk on the nose, with a rich and elegant texture in the mouth and lovely soft tannins.

Truchot’s wines were always somewhat under the radar. He never produced large quantities and he did not have a large following. Jacky Truchot retired after his 2005 vintage and sold his vineyards to David Duband, another fine Burgundy winemaker, but one much more committed to modern winemaking techniques and producing a different style of wine. Only then did the Truchot wines begin to garner more widespread notice, along with very high prices. I found a bottle of the 2001 Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru on a Hong Kong-based internet site priced at 9,300 Hong Kong dollars (HK$), or just under $1,200 in U.S. dollars, more than ten times what it cost originally.

This wine is special to me both for its incredible high quality and beauty, and also because it is so rare. A wine blogger writing under the name Brooklynguy said it best following a Jacky Truchot dinner he attended several years ago, “…every time a bottle is opened, there is one fewer left on the planet, and no more will ever be made.”

1960 Bartolo Mascarello Barolo, Piedmont, Italy. This is one of those northern Italian wines handed down through the generations, from Bartolo’s father, Giulio, and now to his daughter, Maria Teresa.

Photo of Julie and a 4,000 hectoliter cask at

In northern Italy in 2011, Julie is listening to one of Maria Teresa’s helpers describing the large botti, neutral wood casks, used to age Bartolo Mascarello Barolo. There is not much wood influence in a traditional Barolo.

The Bartolo Mascarello Barolo is made from the indigenous Italian grape Nebbiolo, a grape known to have high levels of acid and very firm, sometimes harsh, tannins. Through many generations Barolo was a wine that required many years in the bottle to allow the tannins to soften and the structures to integrate. The traditional winemaking techniques that produced those long-aging wines were challenged starting in the 1970s when a new generation of producers sought to soften those harsh edges with the application of new techniques including the use of smaller, reactive oak barrels, or barriques, to age the wine.

Mascarello was decidedly a traditionalist in these Barolo Wars, including, famously, when the slogan “No Berlusconi, No Barriques” appeared on the labels for one of his vintages. His daughter has taken over the business and has hewed to the traditional methods, which means that her wines, like her father’s, cannot be drunk young.

Italian wine law requires that Barolo age a minimum of three years prior to release, at least 18 months of which must be in wood. For Riserva wines, the aging requirement is five years. For many Barolo producers, especially the traditionalists, that is not nearly enough time. To illustrate, back in the fall of 2006, Julie and I visited the Mascarello Winery in the town of Barolo and met Maria Teresa. That was a little more than a year since Bartolo had died.

After a wonderful couple of hours tasting wines with Maria Teresa, a couple from Germany and a couple from Switzerland, I asked Maria Teresa if I might purchase two bottles of her current release, which at the time was the 2001 vintage. Before she agreed she grilled me on when I planned to drink the wine and how I planned to store it. She would only agree to sell when I promised not to open it before 2011, a full 10 years after the wine was made. (I still have not opened it!)

Photo of three bottles of Bartolo Mascarello Barolo.

Three Bartolo Mascarello Barolos in my cellar. From left, the 1960 in 750ml bottle, the 1.8 liter 1968 and the 2001, also in 750ml.

Since that first meeting, I had been on the lookout for Bartolo Mascarello Barolo, and I was lucky to have the opportunity to acquire a number of bottles, including several 1.8 liter bottles (slightly bigger than a magnum) of the 1968 vintage, and two bottles of the 1960. When Julie and I visited Maria Teresa again in 2011, I showed her a list of what vintages I had managed to collect. She was amazed and said she did not have the 1968 in the family cellar.

Barolo is one of my favorite wines. I like the bold tannic structure and the acidity of the wine, and given enough time to allow the wines to soften and integrate, I prefer the traditionally-made Barolos like those of Bartolo Mascarello. That, along with the rarity of these older vintages and the personal experience meeting and tasting with Maria Teresa, makes this a truly special wine to me.

I have other special wines, some one-of-a-kind finds, others that are just personal favorites. The question is, if we all have these special wines, when should we drink them?

Mortality Comes for Us All

Several years ago a friend mentioned that he was getting ready to purchase the new release of a bold, fruit-forward new world Cabernet Sauvignon that we both knew needed to age five to ten years before it reached its peak. Then it hit me. There comes a time when we have to stop acquiring wines that require long aging. More broadly, I realized that our wine cellars are in a race with our own mortality. When looking for lessons here, the first one has to be to drink your special wines while you are able.

We should realize that wine is also a living thing with a mortality of its own. Yes, some bottles have flaws and so the wines are bad, but all wine fades over time. Kevin Zraly, one of the most famous wine educators in the United States and founder of the Windows on the World Wine School, says that 90 percent of wine is meant to be drunk in the first year, with 99 percent intended to be consumed within five years. I am not sure I believe the numbers are that high, but I do agree that most wines, especially in sub-$30 price range, are not made to age very long.

That does not mean that less expensive wines cannot be aged or definitely will become undrinkable if you keep them more than 12 months. Wine not only lives, but like us, the length of its life and the way it ages are variable, wine to wine and even, in some cases, bottle to bottle. That is what makes this idea of deciding when to drink a particular bottle of wine so difficult, but there are some guidelines.

First, science has some understanding of what makes a wine ageable. It seems it is the structure of wine, the acid and the tannins and certain other phenolic compounds that permit a wine to age, allowing time for the components to integrate. The average wine drinker may not be able to discern those things, and in fact most of us could not without tasting the wine, and that begs the question of when to open it in the first place. But there are people who have done much of that homework for us, and you can find in books, magazines and on the internet something called vintage charts that identify, based on weather conditions in the growing season for different wine regions, which vintages are more ageable than others. It is also pretty easy to find on the internet the optimal drinking window for many specific wines.

Second, how you store a wine will influence how it ages. Heat ages a wine quickly, and rapid temperature changes can also lead wines to age or in other ways change for the worst. Vibration is also not conducive to a wine aging or developing, nor is light. DO NOT keep your wine on top of the refrigerator. The condenser vibrates and gives off heat. You want to store your wines in a dark area that has relatively constant temperature, the cooler the better. Most professional wine storage for red, white and rosé is around 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

Great friends and great wine.

Great friends and great wine.

None of this, though, provides much exactitude about when to drink any wine, especially your special wine. If you do some homework, you can get a sense of when it has aged enough and not too much, but that still leaves a lot of uncertainty and guesswork. And so, I am going to introduce a third factor. Maybe it should be a little less about when you drink a special wine, and more about with whom you are going to share it.

At the heart of it, wine was meant to be shared. It is a communal drink, and some of the greatest joys I have experienced with wine have been those times drinking great wines with great friends. And it does not have to be about wine geeks getting together to have deep conversations about soil structure and fermentation temperatures. Do not get me wrong. I have had great fun with some of my more serious wine friends having just those conversations. But I also have great times drinking serious wine with friends that do not have much wine knowledge. It is the sharing that matters most.

The Far Niente will always be shared with Julie; nothing else would make it taste that good. For the Jacky Truchot, Kevin Bertschi and John Marshall will have to be there. Dr. Mike Falkenhain will have to be part of the Mascarello tasting (he loves Barolo, maybe as much as I do). There are lots of friends, and lots of wine to go around.

Wine is about sharing. That can make any bottle special.

2 thoughts on “Time in a (Wine) Bottle

  1. Reply DoctorW Sep 21,2015 7:31 am

    I just received a notification that Benchmark Wine Group has a bottle of the 2005 Jacky Truchot Charmes Chambertin available for $899. You can find it here: https://www.benchmarkwine.com/wines/42428-truchot-charmes-chambertin-vieilles-vignes-2005?utm_source=Benchmark&utm_campaign=1e16fc2456-ERA9_18_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6777b37d0b-1e16fc2456-208593369

    Mark

  2. Reply Larry Maguire Oct 1,2015 4:51 pm

    Thanks for the shout-out for Far Niente. As a partner and president of the winery you can imagine how wonderful it feels to know that our wines have created such a magnificent memory for you and your wife. Recently I enjoyed drinking a bottle of ’86 Far Niente Cabernet at our son’s wedding. It was the perfect time for a wine from his birth year. Sharing it at his rehearsal dinner will be a memory that none will forget. We look forward to doing the same with the ’88 this spring when our daughter weds. While wines and memories may fade over time there is nothing quite like opening memorable wines with memorable friends. It brings those memories new life.

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