Wine Cellar Discovery
Last week I made a nice discovery in my wine cellar. I found a bottle of wine I did not know I had. I did not know I had it because it was labeled wrong. Here is the story.
Back in 2005 I made an Orange Wine. The recipe called for adding orange peels to the must. Well, I guess I added too many orange peels because that was all I could taste when the wine was done. I really don’t like orange peels, but I bottled it anyway, hoping it would improve with age.
Every so often, when the mood struck me, I would open a bottle of this Orange wine, taste it, and dump it down the drain. It was getting less worse (better) with each tasting, but not something that I liked.
Well last week the mood to try this wine struck me again and I selected a bottle from the cellar. Upon examining it, I noticed it looked kind of dark for an Orange Wine, since my Orange Wine was a white. Intrigued, I took it upstairs to see what happened to make it turn so dark.
Upon opening it, I was greeted with an nice dark red cork and the aroma of grape wine. Could this really be, I thought to myself. When I tasted it, my suspicions were confirmed, I had a 4 year old bottle of Concord Grape Wine! Oh I was so happy!
The 2005 Concord Grape Wine was one of the best Concords I have made. The growing season in my area was perfect. I had the vine pruned correctly. The grapes were very sweet and made an excellent wine. That was the first time I made a good Concord Wine and learned what this under-appreciated grape could produce under the right circumstances.
Needless to say, we enjoyed that wine.
I guess when I was labeling the Orange Wine, one of the Concord Wines got labeled with the Orange Wine label by mistake. I am glad for that mistake.
Let me leave you with a couple of thoughts because of this event. First, give your wine time to age. I am always pleasantly surprised by what a couple of years in the bottle will do for a wine. Second, if a wine is made correctly, but you just don’t like it, bottle some anyway. It will get better with age.
My first instinct was to throw out the Orange Wine. I’m glad I didn’t because if I had, I would not have had the opportunity to enjoy the 4 year old Concord that I did. That experience alone is worth the Orange Wine I do not like.
Enjoy!