Tasting and postponing judgement

Haven’t been consulting the Maria Thun calendar recently (spankety-spank) but I have a couple of examples of wines that started on the back foot on the first night and stormed to the finish in a blaze of sedimentary glory on the second.

Example the first was the Roc des Anges red. Foursquare and hearty on day one it bloomed to reveal lovely herbal subtleties and almost seemed to rebalance itself in terms of fruit, alcohol and acidity. Marjorie Gallet’s kitchen sink pink blend of umpteen varieties called Metissées was austere and reductive not even mellowed by some hefty food. Transformation of recalcitrant duckling into graceful swan was achieved after an overnight sojourn in the bottle.

If the theme fits wear it. My third case was the Pech Abuse, Ludovic and Magali’s 2004 Buzet Rouge (what’s in an appellation?). We had it with leftover lasagne and it was the dead parrot sketch incarnate – the fruit was pushing up the daisies and had joined the bleedin’ choir invisible. I wasn’t even going to dignify the wine by drinking it with the leftover of the leftovers for dinner the following day, but in the spirit of scientific enquiry I poured a slug into a glass and sniffed. Suddenly, the wine had taken shape; the mustiness had blown off and there was a gamey, natural intensity to the fruit. Just delicious and it just goes to show that it pays to be humble before a wine.