Has anyone had good luck at aging these monsters. Tried a 1998 that was still huge and tannic Monday night with dry aged steaks. Opened it and decanted it 1 hour prior to drinking. Still a tannic monster.

On Wednesday, July 25, 2012 11:29:41 AM UTC-4, lleichtman wrote:
> Has anyone had good luck at aging these monsters. Tried a 1998 that was still huge and tannic Monday night with dry aged steaks. Opened it and decanted it 1 hour prior to drinking. Still a tannic monster.

Nope. Still have an '85 that is never going to be opened.

lleichtman wrote:
> Has anyone had good luck at aging these monsters. Tried a 1998 that
> was still huge and tannic Monday night with dry aged steaks. Opened
> it and decanted it 1 hour prior to drinking. Still a tannic monster.

I've got '94, '95 and '99 that I'm sitting on. A '90 Napa drunk a few
years back was good and ready, but that's a somewhat different beast.

Mark Lipton

Mark Lipton wrote:

>lleichtman wrote:
>> Has anyone had good luck at aging these monsters. Tried a 1998 that
>> was still huge and tannic Monday night with dry aged steaks. Opened
>> it and decanted it 1 hour prior to drinking. Still a tannic monster.
>
>I've got '94, '95 and '99 that I'm sitting on. A '90 Napa drunk a few
>years back was good and ready, but that's a somewhat different beast.
>
>Mark Lipton

Decent article about Randy Dunn in SF Chronicle, at
http://www.sfgate.com/wine/thirst/ar...de-3813953.php

Text below is from the article:
Dunn has been on a crusade to reverse the upward spiral of alcohol in
Cabernet, a trend he sees as not only destroying the style of wine on
which Napa has made its reputation but also neutralizing any sense of
place.

He is so opposed to making wine above 14 percent alcohol that he
openly resorts to a controversial method known as reverse osmosis,
which removes some of his wine's alcohol.

Dunn has been lobbying wine publications to review higher-alcohol
wines separately from lower-alcohol wines, so that a 13 percent
Cabernet would be tasted in a different flight from a 15 percent
wine...

....He and two UC Davis researchers are preparing to publish research
that confirms what Dunn has insisted for years: Tasting higher-alcohol
wines affects the way we taste lower-alcohol wines, especially in a
large grouping.

They concluded that "alcohol concentration needs to be considered when
professionally assessing wine quality," according to a draft paper -
perhaps with separate sittings for wines of different alcohol levels.