WTN: Ayu Dag Kagor 1944

[magnolia]

Ayu Dag Kagor 1944 from the Massandra Collection, nr. Yalta; The Crimea, Ukraine

Ever heard of it? Neither had I until I started doing research on the wines from Massandra, Tsar Nicholas II’s spread in the Crimea. To make a very long and very interesting story short-ish, Tsar Nicholas’s uncle, Prince Golitzin, was an obsessive wine collector and winemaker who went around the world on a buying spree, bringing back everything he could put his hands on – and then had it all copied locally.

The cash-strapped Massandra estate, which owns over a million bottles (from the late 18th c. all the way up to the early 21st) - has been selling off its collection over the past 10-15 years. If you’re interested, I can give you rest of the back-story. The bottles are offered at auction periodically, and late last year, both Christie’s & Sotheby’s held sales, almost simultaneously.

The pre-sale tasting was one of the weirdest I’ve attended: loads of mobsters, molls and Ukrainian “media” (ahem), practically assaulting the staff, demanding that their glasses be filled (it’s just meant to be a preview after all, so normally only sips are given) with 100+ year old sherry and the like. There was a Crimean-made Pedro Ximenez that had – I kid you not – 400g + residual sugar. I thought the green coating it left would eat away at my glass. As it was, you could turn the glass upside down with little fear of spilling it…

Anyway, the wines are fascinating, and it was too good an opportunity to miss, and some people I know just couldn’t resist buying a few bottles…

We opened one Ayu Dag Kagor 1944 the other night. Ayu Dag is a monastery, I believe – and Kagor – I’ve heard it’s named after Cahors but that might be apocryphal - is a style of sweet wine made from Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.

We had to break the seal with a hammer, but the cork was in good condition & came out minus only a few crumbs. In the glass, the wine had a very wide medium-dark mauve-brown rim, with a distinct purple core that turned the same mauve-brown after a few minutes. .The nose was amazing- rich, stewed prunes and leather – fortuitous because the dessert I served it with had Armagnac-soaked prunes .

The flavour started out much as the nose – a huge, prune-y attack, with leather and cedar on the mid-palate. Medium finish and surprisingly, decent acidity. The problem with such wines is that they can be extremely syrupy and cloying. I have the biggest sweet tooth, and even I cannot take more than a few sips of some of these styles. But this was good.

After about seven minutes, the wine started to change to…black olives.. I am sure that had I closed my eyes, I would have thought someone had put a bowl of wrinkly black Greek olives under my nose. Though the wine itself was clear when poured, when the bottle was nearly empty, there was a huge clump of sediment adhering to the inside – almost like a vinegar mother, which is somehow logical…

An incredible experience: not to everyone’s taste, surely, but a piece of history that I’d happily be doomed to repeat …

Price: totally arbitrary. I note that Fine and Rare Wines in London have a case of the 1939 on offer for £2550 or so. It's a rare person who'd be able to tell the difference between the various vintages. The bottle of '44 we tried was part of a six-pack that I believe was bought for a few hundred quid, so a HUGE bargain.

[Luis Gutiérrez]

Wow!!! I'd have loved to taste it with you! I wrote a piece about the wines from Massandra quite recently, for which I did quite a bit of research. If you can handle a little Spanish you might be interested in taking a look here.

Cheers,

Luis