Vertically Challenged - When Wine Tasting Turns Ugly

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Recently I participated - no, not just participated - I hosted my first vertical tasting. A vertical tasting is when you taste different years or vintages of the same wine.

I have done two before, one at Hester Creek where I tasted different vintages of their flagship wine, the Judge, and one at my daughter and son-in-law's to try three different vintages of Quail's Gate Syrah. Both of these events were very informative and wonderful ways to spend the evening. It is also a really good way to understand how aging can add so much to the quality of the wine.

I thought I would return the favour to said members of my family and I brought over a vertical of a wine that I felt should be drunk now. These were all Pinot Noir wines from Tinhorn Creek.

Back when I didn't know that much about wine (about a year ago) I  figured that any wine I got from my annual Tinhorn Creek case that had the words "Oldfield" on it was going to be, not only a really good wine, but one that would age well (Oldfield is their higher tier wine - named after the original winemaker, Sandra Oldfield). Not the best way to do things, I know.

Once I actually took the time to catalogue my wine cellar, I found that I had a few Pinot Noir wines that had been sitting around for a few years. Now, if the Pinot Noir was from Burgundy, that would be a good thing as some of their Pinot Noirs can age for years. However, Okanagan Pinot Noirs (as well as most other New World Pinots) just don't typically do that well.

In my cellar I had Tinhorn Creek wines from 2011, 2012 and 2013. All of them had been aged one year in oak and three in the bottle before I got them so the oldest had been in my cellar for three years.

The watch dog of the wines, my daughter's dog, Nebbiolo.

Tinhorn Creek uses screw tops for all of their wines so there were fewer chances for some of the wine faults that can happen - although with just three years of aging, I don't think it would have been a big problem. All of the wines were kept in my cellar (the storage locker of my condo) which is underground and closed off - and uninsulated as well. Not perfect but the best I can do.

We each had three glasses in from of us, one for each vintage. We cracked all three and started sniffing. Interestingly, the 2011 had the lowest amount of alcohol meaning it was a cooler year, the 2012 had a medium level of alcohol meaning it was a warm year, and the 2013 had the highest alcohol, meaning it was the hottest year of the three.

The 2011 had a fairly complex nose. As my son-in-law said, it had a bouquet, rather than just an aroma. It seemed quite interesting with cherries dominating but also other red fruit and some earthiness as well. The 2012 also had more of a bouquet rather than an aroma - similar to the 2011 but a bit stronger in the fruitiness. The 2013, on the other had, had an aroma of cherries and that was really it - it did not have the complexity of the other two.

Ah, but then we started to taste.

I was quite excited to try the 2011. However, when I tasted it, it was lacking the fruitiness that it had when first bottled. In fact, it tasted rather flat and watery. It was not good on the palate. We had waited far too long to drink this wine!

I was a bit devasted that I had brought this wine to share. I had looked so forward to drinking this with the group and found that it was not what I was expecting at all.

Then we tried the 2012.

It, too, had lost a lot of the wonderful fruitiness that Pinot Noirs are known for. It was also quite bland and somewhat tasteless, although not as watery as the 2011. This was not going well!

Lastly, the 2013.

It was, well, OK. Even after just a year in the cellar, it had lost some of those wonderful fruity flavours that it had had when I had tried a bottle last year. It was certainly better than the other two, but not great.

Then my son-in-law said, "Try the nose on the 2011 and 2012!"

Going back to these, the wonderfully complex bouquet that I had smelled before was gone! I could barely smell anything from these two vintages! It was like the delicate bouquet had blown right off of the wines!

We did manage to drink most of the 2012 and the 2013, but left the bulk of the 2011.

Was I disappointed? Absolutely.

Did I learn anything? Of course!

It is said that most wines should be drunk when you buy them. A lot of us think we know better and go counter to that notion. This was a great lesson on why aging is often not the best thing to do!

As I take my WSET 3 in September, I am eager to learn more about how to tell if a wine is good for aging.

Hmm - maybe I should go through my cellar again and take out some more 'aging candidates'!

Vertical Tasting - Drink Up!

A little over a year ago, I participated in my first vertical tasting, ever. I was at Hester Creek for their first Crush Party and, on the Cellar Tour, we were given the opportunity to try out three different vintages of their flagship blend, The Judge. I loved tasting the differences between the different vintages/ You can read more about it here but the reason I mention it is because I recently got the chance to try another vertical tasting, but on my own terms!

Recently, I was in Kelowna visiting with my daughter and son-in-law (who both work for wineries in the Okanagan). My son-in-law, Dan, is an expert sommelier and has a wonderful wine collection that he and my daughter are very generous to share whenever we visit. On the last night of our recent visit, he suggested that we do a vertical tasting - and it was a very memorable time!

First of all, to do a vertical tasting, it is probably a good idea to have three wines. It's much more fun to go back and forth between the different vintages.

The second thing you need is enough wine glasses so that everyone can have all of the wines in front of them. When we went to Hester Creek last year, we used the same glass so you only had your memory to go by when comparing. With 9 glasses laid out, the three of us were free to go back and forth between the different vintages.

The Coravin in action

The final thing is not necessary but, if you don't want to polish off all of the wine that night, a really good wine extraction system is ideal. Dan has the Coravin which is one that is proven to work well for preserving - maybe not forever but certainly for a several months at least.  Lots of tests have been done on coravined bottles and wine will last upwards of a year. The Coravin works like this - a thin needle goes through the cork of the bottle and allows wine to go out of the bottle while you pump argon into the bottle (thus avoiding oxygenation). The needle comes out and, when you're done, the cork self-seals, and you put what's left in the cellar.

The wines we tasted were all Quail's Gate 'The Boswell" Syrah. There was a 2013, a 2014, and 2015. The list price on all of them is $54.99 but I am not sure if you are actually able to get all of them anymore. Dan collected them over the last couple of years.

Three vintages of Quail's Gate 'The Boswell' Syrah

The 2013 was, at first, a little understated. However, this is the advantage of having three glasses sitting in front of you. Each time I came back to it, the taste and nose was better and better. This wine was a touch garnet on the edges in colour. On the nose was a bit of pepper and fruit and some complex earthy smells that were really interesting. On the palate, there was more of the earthy(almost barnyard) and even mineral flavours with some dark plum as well as an almost meaty flavour that I had a hard time discerning (thanks, Dan!). It was incredible how it opened up as we swirled and sipped (but no spitting with this wine!). Definitely one to decant for an hour or so before drinking!  It also had a great long finish. A wonderful wine!

The 2014, at first, seemed very good compared to my initial taste of the 2013. This, however, started to change as time went on. It had lost it's fruitiness (that the 2015 had) but had not yet fully developed the earthy flavours of the 2013. Sometimes, when you lay down a wine, it has a time where it is transitioning and does not quite taste like a fresh, new wine nor does it quite taste like an earthy, complex classic.  After going back to the 2014 several times, this wine tasted like it was on the road to developing some complex, earthy flavours but was not quite there yet. Still a very good wine, but one that was sort of stuck in the middle. Luckily, thanks to the Coravin, Dan put the rest of the wine back in the cellar for, hopefully, another six to twelve months.

The 2015 was a very nice wine. Although it had fairly strong tannins, thanks to its youth, the black fruits like black plums and black currants were very strong on the nose as well as the palate along with black cherries and pepper. It also had some really nice complexity - you can tell that this wine will be a fantastic, complex wine, comparable to the 2013. I would definitely put this one in the cellar for two to three years - but it was still complex and interesting enough to drink right away.

It was an amazing experience to try these fantastic Okanagan wines. It is incredible to actually smell and taste how different these wines were, even though they were from the same grape - the same vineyard, in fact - but just differed by year. To top it off, after our tasting there was still a half a bottle left in each one which was resealed thanks to the Coravin, waiting for some other wine aficionados to try them out.

Reorganizing the wines in my cellar

It also prompted me to go through my wine cellar. I now have seven cases of assorted wines that I am ageing and my previous method of organization was to go down to the cellar, open up every box, look at every bottle, and decide to bring 6 or 8 bottles up. My new organization required me to bring every box and wine bottle up, take photos of them all, enter them in Vivino, note which box each wine was in, and export the cellar info from Vivino to an Excel spreadsheet. Now I can sort all of the wines by year, winery, varietal, etc. so that I can see if I have wines that could be candidates for a vertical tasting. Lo and behold, I have bottles of Tinhorn Creek Oldfield Syrah from 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014!

All I need is a Coravin!