Library Wines

We have always "saved" wine for our library and not having owned a winery before were never sure how much to save or what we should save. So, we saved everything. Well, now six years later we are learning what we should keep and how much we should keep.

Last week we did our first official library tasting. I guess in my little dream world I was anticipating a very formal setting, who knows maybe candlelight, table cloths, pewter spit buckets, beautiful crystal, an aura of elegance and then "the taste". In my imaginary world I envisioned the first taste from our library wine...the slow motion of the glass filled with liquid magic swirling as it slowly moved towards the nose, the exaggerated inhale and then the much anticipated moment..."the taste, the swirl, the swishing sound of liquid and the spit". I envisioned silence and then the lips parting in a smug smile. This would be followed by loud cheering in the background and harp music playing from the heavens, confetti dropping from the ceiling and the unstoppable flashing of cameras as the paparazzi was capturing the moment. Wow, wish I was there...

Meanwhile back in reality world, Steffan and I set up the wines, with our Riedel glassware, our plastic spit buckets and I think I had on crop pants, a t-shirt and my tennis shoes. We sat at my 6 foot plastic table with our spiral bound notebook paper and started to taste. The room was comfortably lit, (to see the color of the wine) a comfortable temperature, and a comfortableness with the tasters. We looked at the wine and set off to work. We tasted, said wow a few times and honestly had one whoa! After the tasting we let the wine sit overnight to taste again the next day.

Here's what we discovered...If it's not nailed down and the wine tastes good don't tell Amber and Julie because they will sell it! If it's an older wine don't hold back so many cases (in our case - until we learn the age-ability of our various wines)... Our 2004 Viognier is a little past its prime - drink immediately, our 2005 Viognier is tasting fantastic right now! These Viogniers are from different vineyards, different years, and have different flavor profiles. The 2002 Vintage is at a drink now stage. Our 2003 has a drink now for our Calico Red and our Cabernet Sauvignon, the Syrah is tasting really good and in the next year or so we'd recommend drinking that. We believe the 2003 Intuition can hang in there 1 - 3 years.

It was a fun two days worth of work. The anxiety has subsided, the fanfare has died down and we're plugging right along!