Self Isolation : Day # 28
1970 López de Heredia ‘Bosconia 5 Ãnos’
2016 Tablas Creek Tannat
After twenty-eight days of self-isolation I’ve almost gotten my indoor routine down to a zombie-like precision. The list of things to do around the house is becoming smaller as we approach the one month mark of social distancing. To take my mind off of the current crisis I did what a lot of people are doing: I spent the day cooking! It also happened to be Easter Sunday so a bit of festivities were called for. I spent most of the day whipping up a take on Cassoulet that turned out to be as dry as a fresh bottle of Muscadet. Unfortunate, yes, but all the more reason to have two bottles open! A southern French dish comprised of meat and beans slow-cooked in fat and stock, Cassoulet is traditionally paired with full-bodied reds from the French side of the Pyrenees where the vineyards bake in the Mediterranean sun. Ideally I’d open an aged bottle of Madiran or Bandol Rouge but, sadly, there were none to be found in the cellar. This gave me the perfect excuse to play around with pairing options. After considering an aged Baga from Portugal, a twenty-year-old Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley, and a domestic Malbec, I settled on a Californian Tannat and a fifty-ish year-old bottle of Rioja.
Tannat is a red grape of French-Basque origin, traditionally finding fame in southern France’s Madiran appellation. More recently it has found success in Uruguay of all places. It is equally at home, however, in the hot, sunny Paso Robles region of California. A wide variety of grapes thrive around this town, roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, but the southern French grapes especially love the relentless sunshine and heat that define most of the growing season in Paso Robles. This bottling is 100% Tannat, a rarity as the grape is known to produce powerful, full-bodied wines with very high tannins. This, however, comes from the Rhône specialists at Tablas Creek. Owned by the same family that runs the famed Château de Beaucastel in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Tablas Creek is dedicated to championing the grapes of Provence and Languedoc-Roussillon and know how to tailor the winemaking to each varietal. One hour in the decanter was definitely called for, and the wine kept opening and softening over the course of the five hours it was open. Full-bodied and almost opaque in color, it was redolent of cassis, black cherry, black raspberry, black berry, black plum, leather, baking spice, and more. Heavy on the palate with mouthcoating tannins and lifted, piercing acidity that were necessary to cut through the rich, fatty food on the table, it was a gastronomic delight. Drink now or hold ten-plus years.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, both in age and in body, was the ‘Bosconia 5 Ãnos’ from Bodegas R. López de Heredia. A bottling style that pre-dates modern labeling and aging laws in Rioja, it is a multi-vintage blend that was designed to drink like a five-year-old wine upon release. Traditional thinking would have called for these wines to be enjoyed long ago but the wines from López de Heredia can oftentimes live far outside of their original recommended drinking window. After successfully removing the crumbling cork (I only let a single crumb fall into the bottle!), the wine, dominated by Tempranillo, had elegant aromas of dried rose petal, cherry, and strawberry with hints of basil and mint over notes of saddle leather and mushroom covered earth. Elegant and seamless on the palate, the flavors of dried red fruits, leather, and earth flowed across the tongue, the once-grippy tannins now muted and softened with age. When it comes to very old wine it is almost always a toss-up on whether or not the wine will be any good not to mention if it will need an hour to come alive or die in five minutes. This was the last, and best, of the three bottles I had and was instantly alive and open after being poured into Burgundy stems. The flavors peaked and then plateaued about five minutes after opening and the wine stayed alive for almost an hour before quickly turning moldy. Needless to say, I loved how it paired with the savory richness of the meal and would most closely describe its character as that of a high-quality, twenty-year-old Burgundy.