Saturday 7 May 2016

A white Rioja at 26 years


This is a wine I tasted 5 years ago and I blogged about it then. Five years on, I have come to revisit it and it was still a very nice experience. A friend was treating us to dinner and everyone was taking some wine along. I thought this would be something unusual; after all, I am not sure how many old white wines of this age or more I had drunk. Alright, let us discount the fortified wines first, and maybe the nobly rotten dessert wines next. I did recall tasting a top white Burgundy from the mid 1970s in maybe 2001, which would make it around the same age as this one at tasting. I checked in my Eurocave and noticed another example of this wine from 1981, so that should take the record for aged dry whites when I get around to tasting it.

The wine is now a nice golden yellow, with a fragrant flowery fruity nose. The palate was sweet woody acid with a slight hint of peach, leading onto a good acid backbone (hint still of peach). Comparing notes with some 5 years ago, the wood was less evident on the nose and the vanilla notes were well tempered. The woody fruit evolved into something more peachy with aging. Everyone there was impressed with this veteran.


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