Wine PhD

Two eggs, poached
Truffled mustard vinaigrette
parsley

What does it mean to be unique, in the context of wine tastings? I'm proposing the following definition:

"A wine tasting is unique if it cannot be replicated under any circumstances other than using wine from the 'wine unit' as the original tasting"

By wine unit, I mean the same case, the same shipment, the same allocation, etc.

I admit that this definition is somewhat contrived in that it was designed to highlight exactly how unique the tasting I am about to describe really was.

Under this definition, very few tastings are truly unique. A 25 year vertical of all 5 First Growth Red Bordeaux wines? Special and rare, indeed... but not unique. The same tasting could be constructed from cellars over and over and over again. What about a Screaming Eagle tasting including every year of Screaming Eagle produced? Quite repeatable under this definition.

Last night VITIS, the wine tasting group of the Department of Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis, under the direction of Darrell Corti, the proprietor of Corti Bros. Market in Sacramento. For those of you who have not met Mr. Corti, I can say with quite a bit of confidence there there is not an individual anywhere who knows as much about so many subjects relating to food and wine. We are fortunate to have him so near to Davis and lucky that he is able to spend time with us.

So why is this tasting truly unique under my definition above? We tasted 21 sherries made sometime around 1940. Most of these sherries are Fino Sherry, which was not created to be kept in bottle for 60 years. As such, there is a high likelihood that today these wines do not even exist in the cellars of the producers. Furthermore, many of these producers do not exist any longer, making this tasting not only unique but also a slice of history.

In the early 1980's the sherry collection that now lives in the UC Davis Enology cellar was donated by a merchant who bought the contents of a closed-down bar in Burgos, Spain. It has sat in the back of the cellar untouched since. Last week, Mr. Corti came to the cellar to pick through the wines and put together what he believed would be an "interesting" tasting. "Interesting" turned out to be apropos.

A part of my job for the tasting was decanting all of the wines. When a wine stands upright for 25 years, there is a fine, clay-like deposit that forms on the bottom of the bottle. In order to keep the wine clear, I decanted by siphoning in order to keep the clay-like sediment in the bottom of the bottles.

Below is a list of the wines we tasted. Sherry, by nature of going through the solera system, is a non vintage product, so no vintage is listed. Based upon the history of the collection and the presence of some extinct brands, the wines are dated to just after World War II.

Wines
Flight 1 - Fino Sherry
Gonzales Byass - San Lucar - Manzanilla
Herederos de Argueso S. A. - Manzanilla Pasada "San Leon" - San Lucar de Barrameda
Sancho - Jerez Fino Delicado - Puerto de Santa Maria
M. Misa - Fino Marques - Jerez
Bodegas Castillo - Fino Catillo - Jerez de la Frontera
Pedro Domecq - Fino Lamero - Jerez de la Frontera

Flight 2 - Fino/Amontillado Sherry
Bodegas Delago - Moriles La Cadena Fino - Puente-Gentil (Cordoba)
M. Misa - Solera Fina Carrascal - Jerez
Bodegas del Diezmo Nuevo - Melquiedes Saenz Amontillado Fino - Moguer

Flight 3 - Amontillado Sherry
Jose Pemartin - Macharnudo - Jerez
Pedro Domecq - Jandilla - Amontillado Macharnudo (375 mL) - Jerez de la Frontera
Pedro Domecq - Jandilla - Amontillado Macharnudo (750 mL) - Jerez de la Frontera
Juan de Burgos Luque - Lagar de Benavides - Aguilar de la Frontera

Flight 3 - Dry to Sweet
Marques de Misa - Abolengo - Jerez de la Frontera
Osborne - Solera India - Puerto de Santa Maria
Agustin Blazques - Jerez Seco No 2
Sanchez Romate - Jerez Especial - Jerez
Alverez & Mayol - Finisimo - Vino para Damas - Jerez de la Frontera
Sancho - M. Oscuro Dulce Superior - Puerto de Santa Maria

Flight 4 - Flight of Fancy
Perdo Diaz Lopez - Especial para Enfermos - Jerez
Ricardo de Valderrama - Salus - Real Aperitivo Tonic Sherry Wine - Jerez
Osborne - Jerez Quina - Vino Tonico Aperitivo Digestivo - Puerto de Santa Maria
J. Luis Mondina - Vino Tostado Gallego - Vigo (Galicia, Spain)

Flight 5 - Licor
Valvanera - Licor from Rioja, Spain

So there it is. A crazy tasting of forgotten sherries.

For me the highlights of the night were some of the non-traditional sherries. I really liked the J. Luis Mondina Vino Tostado Gallego. It possessed so much life - aromatics, deep, slightly caramelized flavors as well as still being a relative of fino sherry. I also liked the Valvanera liqueur. It was some sort of wonderful cross between an anise liqueur like pastis and Jagermeister and something even more herbaceous than either of those. It was very sweet and viscous. I hope to find it again somewhere. From what I can tell, it is still made to the tune of 15,000 bottles per year

Here is a link to a slideshow with pictures from the tasting. I will be adding pictures over the next couple of days, so check back often.

Next week Vitis, our student tasting group, is putting on a tasting of some old sherries. We went and selected wines for the tasting this morning with Darrell Corti, the founder of Corti Bros Market in Sacramento, CA.

Here is one of the wines that we will try. After the tasting I will post my impressions.