When a wine gets too old
What does a wine taste like if you have left it too long in the cellar, when it is in the last third of its life and on the downhill run? Well last night we found out.
We drank a bottle of Granite Hills Macedon Ranges Shiraz 2001 which we bought on a visit to the region in November 2004. So it was 12 years old. There is no suggested drinking window on the back label, but back then Bradley, in the Gold Book, suggested peak drinking in 2015 and gave it 6 out of 7 and Jeremy Oliver’s peak drinking was 2011 and he gave it 89. On the basis of that 2013 was a reasonable time to drink it.
When I opened the wine the cork looked really good. When I decanted it, the colour was a rather dull brick red/brown colour which was the first warning that all was not well. I tasted it, it wasn’t corked and my first impression was that it was okay but not great. After double decanting, I tasted it again more seriously.
It was quite smooth and easy to drink, very mellow and a bit porty, but lacking in any distinct fruit flavours. We continued drinking the wine over dinner in the faint hope that it might improve with time, but alas no! Still it was a pleasant enough drink, but should have been drunk 2 or 3 years ago.
My normal benchmark for a decent bottle of Shiraz is 8 years and I only cellar them longer based on some authorative tasting notes. In this case 8 years would have been about right.
