Wine as old as me...

I got my car back last week. Hallelujah, praise be!!! To what, I’m not sure, but that’s neither here nor there, after everything. Orpheus and I spent the weekend at my place, lavishing attention on the kitty, cooking extravagantly, and generally lying about nude (or some portion thereof). Saturday was the little-celebrated albeit quite exciting “Open That Bottle Night” of foodie (in)fame(/y), during which O. shared a bottle of 28-year-old Riesling Auslese given him by his parents with me.

The story of the bottle is this: Orpheus was his parents’ first child, and his father’s older brother gave the proud new papa a five-year-old bottle of wine to celebrate the birth. Now, O’s parents aren’t (and never really have been) big drinkers. Thus, the bottle was stored in an old fieldstone basement (thank god it didn’t go in the attic!) for 24 years, until they found it this winter, and gave it to Orpheus. He got it some time ago, said he’d share it with me, and then we didn’t really find any good excuse to uncork it until this new fake holiday came around!

So, anyway, I came up with a simple but delicious menu to serve with the Riesling… Just in case the wine had gone bad, we bought a backup bottle, and everything was go. I served seared boneless pork loin chops in a walnut/lemon/shallot cream sauce with green beans. The amuse bouche was mission figs stuffed with walnut, blue cheese and finely minced shallot, wrapped in prosciutto and spritzed with orange juice and a drizzle of olive oil, then peppered. We had a beautiful dessert of minimalist vanilla ice cream with quartered mission figs, drizzled with buckwheat honey. And the wine was pretty damned good.

I should report, though… I broke the cork. We were very careful to serve at the correct temperature, but the cork was rotted through, and the lower half went (in pieces,) into the bottle. This meant a protracted decant was necessary, thus airing out the wine nicely. It smelled pleasantly of flint and vitriol, and was, perhaps, still a little too sugary (in my opinion), but it wasn’t terribly acidic, so I’m not sure it should even have been allowed to age as long as it did. But the overall effect was quite pleasant (and rather intoxicating). Of course, what else would one expect when drinking something as old as oneself?

I’m still a touch flabbergasted regarding eating so many damned veggies for the rest of my life, but am generally doing well adjusting after some retrospective time. Last night I made a lovely Italian lentil soup with (fake) Italian sausage, and a salad of olive-oil sauteed fennel bulb and greens with crushed red peppers, salt and black pepper. Yum.