Wine collecting need not be a preserve of the rich and pretentious.
That truth was driven home to me a week ago at a recorking clinic in Toronto hosted by Penfolds, the Australian winery famous for long-lived reds such as Grange Shiraz and Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon. The free service, staged in select cities around the globe on a regular basis, enables collectors to get a sort of medical check-up on their aging Penfolds treasures. Winemakers Peter Gago and Steve Lienert asses the bottles visually, carefully uncork them if the owner agrees, taste them for soundness and, if determined to be in good condition, top them up with a recent vintage of the same wine. The wines are then resealed with a fresh cork and official stamp signed by one of the winemakers. (If they fail the taste test, they’re recorked but get no approval seal.) A new cork gives old wines a fresh lease on life. That’s because cork, made from tree bark, can degrade over time, permitting too much corrosive oxygen to penetrate the bottle and threaten the wine.
Most people who show up at such events cart in bottles, sometimes cases, of the expensive stuff, such as Grange. I, too, brought in a bottle of 1990 Grange (purchased for $175 but now worth $500 at auction) as well as a 1993 Old Vines red from my cellar but chose not to have them uncorked after they passed Lienert’s visual scrutiny. The “fill” level of the wines was high, suggesting there had been little evaporation over time. Praise be, the corks had kept their seals.
But I also brought in a humble 1994 Penfolds Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet that had been kicking around my cellar for 15 years. I can’t recall what I paid, but it was released in Australia for about $5, Lienert told me. Today, a new vintage of the same wine, the 2008, costs a mere $16.45 in Ontario and $16.95 in British Columbia, not the kind of prices one tends to associate with long-term cellaring.
Lienert said the bottle appeared to be in perfect condition, but I was giddy with curiosity. “Open it,” I said. “Let’s taste.” It was superb. Lienert said it was the highlight of his day – an affordable red that delivered delicious complexity after 16 years, a testament – though obviously self-serving on his part – to the Penfolds brand. He encouraged me to serve it, whenever I chose over the next couple of years, to guests in fine stemware from a decanter, with the label out of sight, then to have them guess at its price. It had all the characteristics of a wine costing $40 plus, he said with a smile. “No one would guess this to be a $16 wine,” he said. I agreed, gleeful that my paltry investment had soared but even happier that I’d get to enjoy a seductively fragrant older wine.
What follows are a few cellar-worthy reds, some affordable and some expensive (most from today’s release at Ontario Vintages stores). Incidentally, if you missed my regular Wednesday column in the Life section this week, I should alert you to an added feature of the wine coverage here at The Globe (click here to read it). Starting today, I’m introducing numerical scores based on the 100-point system pioneered by the estimable U.S. critic Robert Parker, now used by numerous publications around the world. The scores are listed ahead of each wine’s price. (Click here to read an explanation of the scoring system.)
