ADVERTISING: Advertorial — Reader’s questions
Whether prompted by a column we have written or just everyday wine experiences, questions continue to come in on many subjects. We assume that if some of you are asking, more of you may have the same or related questions. So here is a selection of recent questions we have received. Please email your own or stop by the shop anytime to ask.
A customer called this week with a question on a bottle of wine he had acquired on a wine trip to Napa sometime ago. He had been saving the bottle for a special occasion and decided to open it this past week. It was a 2005 vintage Napa Cabernet from a prominent and reputable winery. Unfortunately, the bottle was no longer good. While it is possible the bottle could have been flawed, our customer asked whether 15 years is too long to age a Napa Cabernet? We went on to chat for a bit and considered the same question for any wine.
This is a tough question to answer in generalities. The two biggest factors affecting the age worthiness of any wine are the vintage the wine is from and the wine making style. Many times, a warmer riper vintage will produce wines that are generally higher in sugar and can also be lower in acid. This will make the wines much showier in their youth, but will limit their ageability. Acid is the one factor in wine that will give the wine longevity in the bottle, so similarly to a warm growing year if a winemaker makes the decision to produce wine with lower acid and is more fruit forward the wine will taste delicious “right out of the blocks,” but will likely not do well over time.
A few things that are no reflection on whether a wine will age well or not are color — well made white wines are every bit as ageable as reds. Price is no indication of whether you can age a wine or not. There are expensive wines that are made to be consumed now, just as much as less expensive wines are, and the opposite is true as well. While generally European wines can be more age worthy, it is not always the case, so the appellation of origin similarly is not an accurate predictor of how a wine will age. Your best bet on how a wine will age is to consult your favorite wine professional; most times we will have tasted the wine and discussed many aspects of the wine with either a winemaker or a distributor helping us to know how a wine will do over time. If you are at a winery tasting, the winery staff similarly are or should be well informed on the subject.
We frequently are asked how we pick wines for our shop collection, our wine club and the like. This past week we were asked how we select the wines that go in our “Big Box” program. This is a monthly wine special priced by the case, and it is the closest to a customer favorite selection that we have. We pick wines for all our programs by tasting. As we have said many times, we taste between 50 and 60 wines per week with only those we feel are the best being selected. For the “Big Box,” though, we select those wines from our Friday Night Flights selection that our customers have liked the best. If folks come back and order a wine over and over again it is a pretty good indication that we got it right, and we include those in the big box.
Several of our customer favorite wines are out of stock right now, mainly those from Europe. Several customers who are waiting for those wines to arrive have asked for an update on our supply chains. Many of the issues with domestic wines getting to us on time have been cleaned up as trucking seems to be returning to a more normal state. For international shipments, though, it remains challenging. The tie-ups with shipments from overseas all seem to be in the ports. Both East Coast and West Coast ports are processing items very slowly right now. It seems to be a combination of having fewer customs officials working at the ports to ensure social distancing, and also having fewer available for work due to virus exposure or because they have the virus. We are currently waiting for many wines from Italy that are tied up in port and we are hoping for shipments to arrive at the end of February.
Our first question today required a long answer to fully explain, so we will have another column soon to answer your questions. Send them along and we will answer all your wine queries as quickly as we can.
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George Balling is co-owner with his wife, Mary Lancaster, of the dinner party, a wine and gift shop in Coeur d’Alene by Costco. The dinner party has won the award for best wine shop in North Idaho twice, including for 2018. George is also published in several other publications around the country. After working in wineries in California and judging many wine competitions, he moved to Coeur d’Alene with Mary more than 10 years ago to open the shop. You can also follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/#!/dinnerpartyshop.