Last month, while at the London International Wine Fair, we had brought a few bottles from Spain to share with our hosts. We always like to bring wines from our cellar, wherever we travel, knowing that we’ll magically find the need to open them among friends. This trip we opted for a California treat, S.Anderson’s 1999 Cabernet Sauvignon, a wine that I had bought many years ago on the advice of a nice Parker review. Having never tried it, we could only hope that a 10 year old Cali Cab would be a fun warm up to whatever wines were in store for us at the LIWF.

During dinner of our first night in London, we popped open the bottle, and despite its age, and rough ride in the belly of our British Airways flight, the wine showed beautifully. Paired with a roasted lambshank simply tied up with fresh rosemary, alongside roasted potatoes, the subtle delicate Cabernet flavors aged perfectly with a touch of oxidation on the nose and palate. It was a wine that gave each swallow a tinge of sweet regret as you longed for the flavors to linger on.

As the bottle slowly disappeared, the final drops savored, I felt sad thinking about the amount of people who drink wine immediately without holding onto it. We have no temperature controlled cellar here in Terrassa, but we do our best to keep the wine out of the sun, and as cool as we can. That said, many people would draw a rigid line and say that you should never store a wine in such conditions, and as a result, they never do. Sadly this means that many people miss out on the joys of a well aged wine. (Fickr phot by jenny downing)

Tonight, we’re grilling Paella on the grill and due to a head cold all of our wines will be aging a day or two longer. No need wasting some good juice on a congested head!

Have a good week and enjoy the start of summer!

Cheers,

Ryan Opaz