Old wines I found

[qrn]

interesting wine story, while rooting around in the basement in anticipation of having a new furnace installed,I spent some time in the darkroom,where I made wine in the past,found a glass carboy with several gallons of a cabernet that I made in 1981,and several other bottled wines that I made a few years prior to that,since these things were 30 years old ,I thought I would taste em and see what they were like, they had not turned to vinegar, but were real "thin".. they were all Cabernet grape things...thenIfound the small vinegar barrel that my grandfather put his spoiled wine in for making vinegar back in the 30's and 40's,,It leaked badly .so I filled it with water and let it sit for a few days..so it would swell up and stop leaking,,,it did ,so I put some of the thin stuff from the carboy in it ,and a splash of the last vinegar that I made in it,so it would have for sure the proper stuff in it to make vinegar...put a light bulb shining on it to keep it warm, smelled it today , and its progressing well...Ah yes,guess thats a save,even though the rest is not drinkable, even though "well aged"...(room stays in low 60'sF)Ifigured this might be an interesting story of Wine ageing,in case someone else has a bunch of stuff inthe basement...

Bud

[DickL]

Hi, I'm Dick, and I have a bunch of stuff in the basement...

You're not the only one who tried home winemaking (in my case, back in the days when you had to get a federal permit), but nothing I produced turned out to be particularly interesting. (It's also hard to find good wine grapes in the Chicago suburbs; there's lots of pretty good, fairly inexpensive stuff on the market; ...). But I bought some wines of various levels of quality and kept them around, and we've picked up some in later years on vists to wineries. I never found the perfect occasion to open them, and should have opened and drunk them anyway, but that didn't happen for a variety of reasons that are irrelevant here. Then we moved and they got shoved to the back, and now, ten years after the move, I've still got some bottles that were too old ten years ago and are waay too old now. So I've been opening one every week or so. I've found a couple from the 70's that, while way over the hill, still had enough character and style to be marginally drinkable, and a lot that just got dumped. (I've been working on the lower quality bottles first, and am now about to get into some that really had some aging potential. These should have been recorked at some point, but it didn't happen.[sigh] But I've gotten fairly good at removing soft corks, so all is not lost. Maybe I'll get lucky. Next up is a 69 Sterling Cabernet...)

A couple of old California Barberas, one from Sebastiani and one from Martini, I used as the basis for some "Barbera port", using some grape syrup from an unused container of grape concentrate left over from the winemaking era, some high proof (I was out of brandy), and just a little "43" liqueur. In the past I've made some "ports" this way, using over-the-hill wine, and they're not too bad, particularly if the base wine has some character. Sometimes I add a little recent wine to the blend. The stuff I make this way isn't excellent, but it's better than some commercial ports and portos that I've had. If you like port, you might want to experiment (if you've still got any of the old stuff left).

I've also used some OTH wine for vinegar, but we don't use that much wine vinegar, so that doesn't use up much.

[qrn]

That is very interesting,makes me feel much better about the mess down there,,,sounds like our wine making was pretty similar, I used to help my grandfather make it back in the 40's,when ,as you say,legality was marginal...

take care,,,,and thanks,,

Bud