Zoom tonight was a bottle of Gloria 2000. Off bottle, undrinkable.
So I open a Burgundy with no label. Red capsule with faded embossed tower, brown bottle, the cork is wine stained and was unreadable . Import label was Wine Cellars of Briarcliff which means it was privately imported. After that I am out of clues.
The wine is superb. Aged, it must be at least thirty years old, probably more with the indescribable perfume that great Burgundy sometimes has . Medium long finish. The wine continued to improve in the glass. 96/7
There are people on this board. who ask about that Eureka Burgundy experience. This would have been that.
Not that it will likely help you with this privately imported bottle, but I have taken pictures of unreadable corks, labels, capsules, and surprisingly found that I could see detail in the photos (with enlargement) that I could not with the naked eye (or even magnifying glass). And these were just iphone shots.
Outstanding Mark! That Eureka/transcendent Burgundy experience is really the most remarkable thing I have encountered in wine. It is really extraordinary. Chateau de la Tour has an embossed tower on their capsule. The Labet family also ran a negociant business through at least 1978.
With the help of John Gilman, and the brown bottle, I think I know what it was. In the mid nineties I bought 2 bottles of ancient Burgundy. One I took to La Paulee, where it showed very, very well. The second disappeared in a move. According to John, prewar Clos Lambrays were often bottled in brown glass, and when he said that, one of those cartoon lights went off and I remembered the missing bottle: Lambrays 1937. The only embarrassing thing was that I had completely forgotten losing it.
I’m saying this shouldn’t embarrass you. I’m saying that not because it isn’t embarrassing (it probably is) but because I forget I have things all the time
