“Sturdy and Full-Bodied” or so it says on the label. This was the slightly ‘higher into the neck fill with the non-spinning foil’ bottle from the pair I have. When the (very short) cork was extracted there was only a couple of mm bled up the cork with no seepage, which surprised me. I suspect this was a standard bottling & back in the 1970’s I have no idea if Sebastiani Vineyards was a good or bad winery. The label was in ‘like new’ condition.
I decided to decant in the end to speed up proceedings just leaving tiny amount of sediment that appeared in the bottle…
Only small signs of age in the colour (where the hell did Seckford source these old IB bottles?) so this too looked a youngster. The nose was all about polished new leather, some Musar VA and bramble with touches of sage & a light giblet gravy savoury meat note, quite fascinating in fact. There were no distinct fruit notes that I could pick. The decanting helped blow off the VA funk in this, rounding the wine in the process. The bitter tannins are still prominent as is the acidity. The length is impressive and a wine which is still very intact although not great or particularly complex. In fine condition considering its age. 12.5%vol.
Thanks for the note, Phil. Interesting that it still holds out some pleasure. Back in those days (by crackey), there was a lot
of these “standard” wines produced by the likes of Sebastiani, Wente, Concannon, Parducci, Pedroncelli, LouisMartini, etc.
They were not wines meant to garner big scores from the critics…just wines you could drink w/ a bowl of pasta to wash it
down. They were sterile filtered, sometimes pasteurized, aged in large redwood tanks or large oak ovals…all the best
technology of the day. I’m always amazed how well some of these “industrial” wines hold up with age.
Tom
Cricky, have I just bigged up an old school mass produced wine. Even better if I have! I remember drinking early to mid 80’s Penfolds Koonunga Hill some 6 years ago and remarking how well they they too had stood the test of time too. I would like to think the same ‘everyday’ bottles from current vintages will drink so well in another 30 years but I doubt it! Many of the higher end bottles probably won’t last that long these days either with the need to produce wine with instant gratification! A shame sometimes.