My Article: A Pre-Phylloxera Wine

Old wines are like old paintings. They are timepieces that touch your senses with history. I was thinking of that as I had a few sips of 1891 Château Ausone last night at a dinner at Château Carignan. About ten of us were lucky enough to taste it, and it was a trip back to another era.

A brown, amber red color, the wine showed fascinating aromas of fruit tea, honey and light plums that turned to flowers and exotic fruits. It was really about the aromas. The palate was full and silky with super fine tannins and an oily texture. It came through smoky and dusty at the end. It’s sort of pointless scoring something like this, but it was 97 points – meaning it was superb quality for what it was.

I am sure the wine was pre-phylloxera. I have had other bottles in my career. In other words, it was produced from grapes that had been grown on vines that were on their own rootstock. They had not been replanted in 1891 due to the spread of the phylloxera louse throughout Europe during the

1850s. If I remember properly the tiny estate of Ausone in St. Emilion did not replant until the turn of the 19th century.

In any case, it was an ethereal experience tasting such an ancient bottle. I will remember it forever. And it made me think of what people may say about the 2011 when it is drunk in 120 years or so.

The strange thing about the bottle was that it was labeled as 1877 but the cork said 1891 (as pictured).

This is pretty common because the old bottles at Ausone, and many other estates, were kept unlabeled in their dark and damp cellars and mislabeling was common in the past. The cork tells the real story, and it was 100 percent 1891 printed on the cork.

It was sort of sad when I tweeted and people made jokes about how the wine was fake. I guess fake wines are on many people’s minds – serious and not serious – at the moment following the US FBI arrest of wine collector Rudy Kurniawan.

However, this was a real bottle, and I was so happy to experience its magic.

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