Ever heard of/tried this trick?

C

Claude Kolm

Claude Kolm
Kermit Lynch once told me of a customer of his who came in with an old wine, opened it and it was oxidized, put the cork back in, shook up the bottle, and the wine freshened up. Makes sense, I guess, but I've never heard of it elsewhere and I'd never tried it before.

So today I opened a 1998 Domaine d'Aupilhac Montpeyroux that was showing enough oxidation in the nose that I wasn't interested in drinking it, put the cork back in, and shook the bottle up, and lo and behold, not only has the wine freshened up in the nose and mouth, but the color has gotten deeper and significantly more toward the blue end of the spectrum.
 
Claude, Your comments remind me of a VERY knowledgeable participant (especially with Burgundies) on the old Prodigy board. He maintained that the top of bottles was markedly different than the bottom of bottles; thus, he advanced the notion of shaking bottles before opening them so as to offset this imbalance.

This person had so much respected gravitas that no one argued with him (even while wondering about the merits of his assertion).

. . . . . . Pete
 
I have found decanting to make a big difference, mundane as it may seem.

I remember a bunkie who dropped and cracked a mag of '59 Beychevelle, IIRC. He thought it smelled meh, and he had to get home, so he left it. I sent the troops to buy a chinoise upstairs, and we decanted it. Over the next few hours it totally bloomed.

This is not an unusual experience for me with great old wine. I wonder at the people who fear instead the fast disappearance of old wines after opening. I've had so many occasions of the reverse.

Not that it's uniform or anything.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
I have found decanting to make a big difference, mundane as it may seem.
Click to expand...
I had another bottle of this Montpeyroux last week (several bottles of it had gotten lost in my cellar until last week; I had not intended to age it this long) that was even more oxidized and I decanted it -- no improvement over about 5-6 hours that it spent in the decanter.
 
Oh, there are wines that are gone, of course.

I wish I knew better how to tell which are which.

Though I drink fewer very old wines.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
Oh, there are wines that are gone, of course.

I wish I knew better how to tell which are which.

Though I drink fewer very old wines.
Click to expand...

*cough cough* *sputter*

Mark Lipton
 
Nothing to lose by decanting old wine (or storing upside down for a few weeks before opening). If there was some way to riddle still wines properly I would; some of the older Haarts throw off a lot of tartrate crystals.

The other option is to blend. My favourite combinations:

Generic old tannic Burgundy + semi-carbonic Morgon
Old Barolo + aged Dolcetto (young ones just overwhelm aromatically)
Premox white Burgundy + Blanc de Blancs Champagne (low dosage)
Past-it fino/manzanilla + oloroso + moscatel (presto, amontillado!)
Old Muscadet + young Muscadet + salt (I use ~4g/l, and then talk about salinity and umami in older dry wines)
Old Chenin + young Chenin (probably the most obvious blending trick)

Etc.
 
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