Really old Reisling

A few weeks ago we had a garage sale to get rid of some of the pre-wedding handme downs. We didn’t have much of real value, most of it was junk, but junk that took up space. A lady purchased an old patio set asked us to deliver it, since she was just a few houses down. No problem, of course, so Mr. Lush takes off. He comes back with a large container of wines that she had from her father, and she doesn’t drink wines. Sounds very exciting right? The vast majority of it is Riesling from 1979-1986. Hmm. I have never had 20+year old Riesling before, but I thought it lasted a while and call Lucy to ask her. She had heard the same, but had never had one.

Curious, Mr. Lush and I open a bottle of 1982 Spatlese. (Spatlese refers to the level of sugar/sweetness in the wines) Hmm. Its awfully golden. That’s what happens to whites when it ages, right? Smell. Hmm. Smells like sauternes-ish. Probably not going to be very Reisling, right? Taste….sort of apple juice like. Not moldy apple juice or funky apple juice. Just apple juice like. Dang it. We tried a few more, one with the Luce’s, who thought the same thing. Dang it. After looking it up we see that Spatlese wines will keep for 5-10 years, maybe 15 in extraordinary years. The youngest wine we had was a 1986, so they will all probably be thrown down the drain. Of course, I’ll open them and taste, hoping that perhaps we had one bottle that magically managed to stay good, and will probably be disappointed that the wine acted just as it should’ve….it was past its time. It might’ve been fantastic in 1990, which is probably how long she’d had it, based on other bottles in the bin.

I could be mad at the Wine Gods again, but one bottle did have a lovely rendition of a tapestry of the wine gods in a garden, so I thought perhaps it was a sign that I shouldn’t be mad at them, since I'm collecting art wine labels.