Oh no!
Disaster!
And for once I’m not talking about house stuff. (At the moment. That could change. I haven’t checked my email or text messages in the last couple minutes, so who can say.)
No, this time the disaster is the Barolo I’d wanted to try with my shepherds’ pie last week was long past it. When I poured it into the decanter, it was entirely brick red. I hoped it would still be OK, but alas. It was practically vinegar.
It was one of the oldest wines I had in my collection, and obviously I hadn’t quite been taking care of it the right way. I knew that my current solution of storing everything in a closet wasn’t great for the long term, and I’m obviously going to have to come up with something more permanent if and when I move. (Hedging those bets!)
I wondered if anything else from the closet/cellar was in bad shape. So I grabbed a random bottle and decided to test it out.
For science, naturally.
I happened to lay my hand on a bottle of 2018 Winzerhof Sax Grüner Veltliner Zwillingslauser Kamptal and chilled it in the fridge. This has only been in the closet for just shy of a year. I bought it last April from Princeton Corkscrew, as part of my community-minded support your local wine shops effort.
Grüner veltliner is grown almost entirely in Austria. Most of the grüner we get here in the US is just a couple years old and tends to be sharp and crisp with citrus notes. I get lime on this one. It’s super crisp and high in acidity. It's probably more apt for a hot summer day and a cool salad, but it's a great aperitif on its own too.
More importantly, it still tastes pretty fresh. So I've got some time to maintain my current collection, but they need a real home. (As do I.) I'm off to DuckDuckGo for wildly expensive wine fridges. Stay chill, folks.