Last night, it seemed time to kill our last bottle of 1986 Domaine Daniel Rion et Fils Nuits St. Georges “Les Vignes Rondes.”
When popped, nothing but sad, overwhelming barnyard notes, with that old funky flavor profile from wines that have died and gone to Wine Rainbow Bridge. It would have had to improve exponentially to reach barnyard. Sub-barnyard. Like Augean Stables barnyard, and then some. The flavor seemed hopeless. I figured a Minnesota or Cleveland winning a Super Bowl kind of hopeless.
Nada, zip, zilch. It was flat out yucky. An “I have never seen a wine come back from 70 points down, so let’s beat traffic and leave” kind of yucky. So yucky, you wouldn’t let a guest taste it sort of yucky. A “nothing to taste here, folks, move along” sort of yuck.
We gave teeny courtesy sips every hour or so, keeping hope alive, but after 6 hours, we pronounced it dead, declared 1999 as the time of death, and sighed over the corpse. We had a moment of silence and turned in. The Rion was put in the cooking queue wine morgue and that was that. Left it at room temp, open, to fend for itself until some future tomato and cheese sauce assignment might arise.
So, today, after some chores, for some reason, I gave it a final taste, really to say good bye to a friend. But, it had risen, Phoenix-like, from the dead. 20 hours later, it is tasting fantastic. It’s alive! Not some sort of Pet Semetery kind of creepy alive, but spot on.
It’s got the backbone, the mature fruit, the acidity, nice sour cherry, some faint allspice (like just a hint of your nice spice drawer;) with very faint “plowed soil” notes (loam, in a nice way,) a hint of steak tartar, slightly mineral, abbsolutely great ‘density’ of mouth feel…the works. I am sipping as I speak!
There is a long, lingering finish that is primarily front palate and also mid to back of the tongue and maybe the arch of the back of the soft palate.
I find it rather unbelievable. This wasn’t a zombie or Frankenstein-like resurrection, this was a weird miraculous return. This became Wedding at Cana good.
I don’t know what to say. Lucky I gave it a good bye, mercy taste for old times sake. It’s like calling an ex after closing time and she says, “Come on over.”
So, it went from two thumbs down to two thumbs up in just under a day.
Has anybody else run across such transformations? This may be the biggest turnaround I have seen.