A little over a month ago, Jason and I celebrated our twentieth wedding anniversary. WOW. Where does the time go? To celebrate, we opened a bottle of wine that we have been carting along with us all those years. It was.....interesting.
Just after we were engaged, we traveled to the Bay Area to visit Jason's mom and step-dad. We all took a couple of trips over to wine country during our visit, visiting several wineries. After a long day of tasting, we ended up at the lovely Trefethen Winery. Upon telling the man in the tasting room that we were newly engaged, he handed Jason a bottle of 1989 Cab and instructed him to open it on our 20th anniversary. After leaving that winery, that bottle of wine began quite the journey.
We left the bottle, along with a few others, in my parents basement for the three years we were in Germany. Picking it up on our return, we carted it with us through the years to Missouri, and then on to North Carolina, California, Kansas, New York, and back to North Carolina. Along the way, that poor bottle of wine was subjected to some pretty radical temperature fluctuations; hot summer days and nights, along with sub-freezing days and nights, in the car as we moved from place to place throughout the seasons. There were times that it sat still for years at a time, but it was jostled around enough to off-set any positive cellaring.
Would you guess that twenty years of sojourning about isn't good for wine? Our first clue was the cork crumbling to bits as we attempted to extract it. Then, the actual smell of the wine accosted our senses. I wasn't ready to give up hope. The third clue though came as we poured the wine into the glass. Anticipating a lovely dark red, what we got was instead a brown swill. I am typically never scared to taste a wine. I was kind of afraid of this one. I had some flashbacks to when I taste tested blk. water, aka black water for my Water Sciences class.
Suffice it to say the wine was bad. As bad as wine goes. The one sip was enough, and the rest of the bottle was used as fertilizer. But at least the wine had a good story, and we will never forget that, lovely...errr ONCE lovely bottle of 1989 Cabernet Sauvignon.
Just after we were engaged, we traveled to the Bay Area to visit Jason's mom and step-dad. We all took a couple of trips over to wine country during our visit, visiting several wineries. After a long day of tasting, we ended up at the lovely Trefethen Winery. Upon telling the man in the tasting room that we were newly engaged, he handed Jason a bottle of 1989 Cab and instructed him to open it on our 20th anniversary. After leaving that winery, that bottle of wine began quite the journey.
We left the bottle, along with a few others, in my parents basement for the three years we were in Germany. Picking it up on our return, we carted it with us through the years to Missouri, and then on to North Carolina, California, Kansas, New York, and back to North Carolina. Along the way, that poor bottle of wine was subjected to some pretty radical temperature fluctuations; hot summer days and nights, along with sub-freezing days and nights, in the car as we moved from place to place throughout the seasons. There were times that it sat still for years at a time, but it was jostled around enough to off-set any positive cellaring.
Would you guess that twenty years of sojourning about isn't good for wine? Our first clue was the cork crumbling to bits as we attempted to extract it. Then, the actual smell of the wine accosted our senses. I wasn't ready to give up hope. The third clue though came as we poured the wine into the glass. Anticipating a lovely dark red, what we got was instead a brown swill. I am typically never scared to taste a wine. I was kind of afraid of this one. I had some flashbacks to when I taste tested blk. water, aka black water for my Water Sciences class.
Suffice it to say the wine was bad. As bad as wine goes. The one sip was enough, and the rest of the bottle was used as fertilizer. But at least the wine had a good story, and we will never forget that, lovely...errr ONCE lovely bottle of 1989 Cabernet Sauvignon.