The second wine I served at our Xmas Eve dinner was a 2004 Deloach Sonoma County Forgotten Vines Zinfandel that I had bought at the winery years before. At $35 this is close to the most I’ve ever spent on a wine – so I had great expectations for it. I had, of course, liked it at the winery – but I’m not sure to what degree you can trust your taste buds when you go wine tasting.
I was concerned about this bottle as soon as I opened it. First, the cork broke a little bit when I tried to take it out with my rabbit corkscrew – I was successful with a regular corkscrew, however. I love the rabbit, but it does fail to work on many a cork.
Then the cork was half way wet (not just the bottom but the sides). That concerned me that the wine had gone bad, but it tasted fine. And it did. It was a good wine, dark, balanced, with stature. I tasted like an adult wine for adults, its dark fruit had settled in, there weren’t any shouting flavors; a fine wine. It just wasn’t an amazing wine. It wasn’t what I’d consider a $35 wine.
Now, that may be because I was unconsciously comparing it to the Hess wine I’d served with Hanukkah dinner – which was vastly superior (and twice as expensive), or because it had gone somehow bad – but it just didn’t allure me. Oh well.
