Wine, dinner, zombies and hope.

8 years together, 2 years married. Surely that night deserves a couple of steaks a nice a bottle of wine. Yes, definitely. But of course I could just as easily have said "ooh the 3rd Tuesday of the month..let's party!"

Any excuse will do.

 In the basement closet I call my wine cellar I have a modest but growing collection of around 100+ bottles of wine that have accumulated over the past 2 or 3 years:

 

Note the digital thermometer/hydrometer and water bucket I stole from the freezer. The thermometer/hydrometer is there to show me just how wrong the temperature and humidity is in the closet and the water is there to try and fix it. 

So, when an occasion arises (a such as an anniversary, or a Tuesday) the question for me is which one do I open?

I say modest collection because 100 bottles isn't really that much. Sure, it seems like a lot if, as I did for most of my wine drinking career, you buy your wine as you go and never have more than a few bottles on the ready in your kitchen. But if you are a wine drinker chances are you open a bottle somewhere between everyday and every three or four days. Even if it's only every four days that still works out to 91 bottles a year! And if between you and your better half you go through a bottle every 2 days that's 182 bottles of wine a year! And that's not including days when guests are over and several bottles get drunk. So having a good supply makes sense. You don't have to keep running out to the wine shop and you have a supply for unexpected guests and you always have something fitting to open regardless of what's for dinner.

Also, I figure having a stash of 100 or so bottles of wine is just enough to carefully ration out for several years in the event you have to board up the windows due to a zombie attack. Those of you living near a cemetery would do well to be prepared.

 

But the main reason to have a wine cellar is to age your own wine. This is not necessary if you only drink wine that costs less than around $14. Those wines are perfectly yummy but are generally made for drinking soon (there are exceptions). But if you sometimes buy wines that go for $15 or $20 and up some of those may be candidates for cellaring. Those wines, if kept well, will mellow and gain a complexity of taste and bouquet. 

So anyway, anniversary dinner. Steak. Wine. Red. There are several choices, but the problem of cellaring wine is when do you open it? There is a tendency to keep wine for a special occasion that never seems to come! The worst thing you could do is wait too long. None of my wines are that old yet but they one day will be. When in doubt err on the side of youth.

I decided on a bottle of 2002 Arrowood Syrah from Sonoma I've had for a few years (it was around $25)...Robert Parker reviewed it in '03 and said it would drink well for 7-8 years so that should make 2010 a good year to open it. Plus 2002 was the year my wife and I met!

 

and here's what it was going to be drunk with (1 ribeye and 1 fillet..each to be shared);

I took the bottle out of the cellar several hours before and stood it upright to allow any sediment to settle. The wine was "unfined and unfiltered" so I expected a bunch of junk at the bottle of the bottle, surprisingly there wasn't much. I removed the foil and could see that the cork was of great quality and in perfect shape:

 

 

Not a hint of seepage. I poured a taste into a glass. The wine was very dark, almost opaque with the slightest hint of bricking on the rim. Surprisingly dull nose, some leather and rubber tires.

Then I had a taste: Full bodied, stewed fruit, a tad smoky. Still fairly tannic for an 8yr old, but starting to soften. Quite a hot wine too at 15% alcohol and it showed. Dry and heady. Needed some air.

After some sips my wife decanted the bottle and I carried on in the kitchen...

herbed potatoes,

 

tarragon/stilton/white wine sauce,

co-ordinating (empty pan for garlic/lemon scallops, oil for fried onion strings):

 the final plate:

So in the end I liked the wine but I did not quite love it. It seemed a bit out of balance. Slightly sour, too much alcohol. A long, almost port-like finish. I keep tasting it and going back and forth from giving it an 89 to a 91...so 90 it is. But it went very well with dinner, it cut right through the rich meat and fried onions. It may have even been better the next day when I drank the small reminder.

I think the reason I like my cellar so much is that when I look at it I don't see a just bunch of bottles of wine. I see future anniversaries. I see birthdays, gatherings of friends and family...Tuesdays yet to come.

The cellar represents hope. It is a dark, cold, closet of pure optimism. Each bottle is a share of stock in the future. I may already have my 40th and 50th birthday wines in the back there somewhere. Each bottle is a bet on being there for it's opening.

And if you think that sounds like bullshit, well, if you have a better way to justify your wine spending to your wife I'd love to hear it.