I was checking out some restaurants in Chicago for a place to take my parents as a Christmas present. Charlie Trotter’s has several bottles of wine that are over 100 years old on their wine list, including an 1870 Lafite-Rothschild. How can that still be good? Apparently Leon Panetta won a bottle on a bet over bin Laden. I hope it’s good for his sake.
It’s a very mixed bag. Stored properly, the right kind of wine can be good. Very good. Especially if it was a bottle from a French vineyard prior to it’s being affected by Phylloxerain the mid19th century(This would make it more unique, than inherently good. But a bottle saved that long would probably have a good chance of being one of the good vineyards/vintages/styles)***.
***Of course, you won’t know if it’s any good until it’s opened. And that is an expensive gamble.
The Billionaire’s Vinegar The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine
by Benjamin Wallace
Talks about a very similar bottle. Worth a read/listen.
Wine doesn’t turn to vinegar as a result of time. It turns to vinegar as a result of bacteria that convert the alcohol to acetic acid. Wine without the presence of these bacteria simply oxidizes, at a rate that depends on the availability of oxygen and the permeability of the container. Some oxidation improves wine, and some wines are made so that they require more oxidation to reach their peak, so depending upon the storage and the characteristics of the original wine, it may still be good, though I think any wine would have reached it’s peak well before 100 years and have begun to deteriorate.
So, dipping the top in wax after 40 years, or whatever an ideal age is, would probably extend the life of the wine? Or, if the wine is stored in a container full of inert gas (seems reasonable for $15,000 bottles) it should be good indefinitely?
I would think so, though I’m no expert on wine. It’s possible there are some other chemical processes going on that could degrade the wine even in the absence of oxygen. I
Wax is actually rather permeable to oxygen. Those wax dipped bottle tops are just for show (and are annoying as hell to open).
There already is oxygen within wine, regardless of how permeable the capsule or cork are. Most free oxygen within wine is introduced at bottling, see for example this enology note discussing oxygen levels at bottling and wine aromas. SO2 scavenges a lot of it, to be true. The linked article notes that wine sealed in glass ampoules developed bottle bouquet and developed in a similar manner to wine sealed with a cork.
The wiki on wine aging isn’t a bad introduction to the topic.
Me, I’d much rather go to a crown cap-type of closure. I detest cork taint, and even though I can only pick it up in 3% of bottles, it seems those 3% include your most expensive ones. If crown caps are good enough for the Champenois to age their wines sur lie for 20 years, then they’re good enough for you and me.
The 1870 Lafite would be an amazing experience, however it seems that in every mega vertical that I’ve read about, most of the wines over 75 years old were DOA. Still, there’s always that one… I had the privilege a few years ago of trying a 1955 Chateau Talbot that was still very drinkable at 50 years old, albeit noticeably an older wine (browning color; faint aroma dominated by odors of tobacco, cedar, and forest floor, rather than fruit.)
They are going to be quite a bit different than their younger counterparts. The wine educator Kevin Zraly tells a story about serving someone a 1921 Y’Quem. The guest was horrified at the dark brown, almost black color, and evidently caused a scene “how dare you ask that kind of money for that garbage,” etc… The wine was fine, and after smoothing over things with the guest, they ended up serving it by the glass to the rest of the patrons that night. I would have given up quite a lot to be able to try that vintage.
I’ve not worked in high-end restaurants where that might be a problem, but I wonder how restaurants allocate the risk of loss in the case of serving ancient wines? It’s hard for me to imagine that they’d comp the entire bottle. I’ve seen wine lists with the warning that older wines might be undrinkable and so order them at your own risk, which seemed to me to be a little gauche.
Edit: Oh, and though I dream of being able to go to Charlie Trotter’s or Alinea, I thought that Everest was an excellent high-end restaurant. Then again, I love Alsatian wines and food. Sounds like fun. Let us know how it turned out. Lucky parents.