We enjoyed the 2001 Querciabella Camartina last night. It was absolutely delicious. Typically 70/30 Cab/Sangio (if the internet can be believed), to me the sangiovese sang louder last night. It was certainly on the darker-fruited end of the spectrum, which could be the cabernet speaking but also not unlike a great Brunello. But beyond that, the acidity and spice took the show. I detected no reason this can’t go many more years, so enjoy now or hold as you see fit.
But the really odd thing was the fine sediment. The bottle had been standing up for a few weeks, and I decanted it. I started seeing fine sediment in the pour long before I normally do, so I stopped with more wine left in the bottle than I have ever seen at that point in the decanting process. I needed the bottle since we were double-decanting to take the bottle out, so I poured the rest of the wine into a glass (Grassl cru if you’re interested in the scale, so that’s about 70ml of sediment-affected wine out of a 750ml bottle). The difference in color was amazing. Beautiful clear wine in the decanter, and in the glass it was creamier-looking and paler, looking like milk had been added the way one might with coffee, or like it was a glass of melted Graeter’s black raspberry without the chips, for those of you in Ohio or otherwise in the know. And virtually no large bits of sediment - all very fine, but as I titled the post, I’ve simply never seen this much of a bottle taken up by the fine sediment layer. Crazy. If you are going to open one in 2020, stand it up now!
