On Oct 28, 9:50*am, "Bi!!" > wrote:
> I was culling through some wines in my cellar and came upon a couple
> of bottles of 1997 Bonny Doon Le Cigare Volant which is Randall
> Grahm's hommage to CNP. *The wine was bought on release and stored at
> 55F. *It's a blend of Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault and Mourvedre although
> any resemblence to CNP is purely accidental. *I recall drinking the
> wine on release and enjoying the California fruit flavors that
> reminded my more of Village Beaujolais than CNP. The synthetic cork
> was a fairly thin plasctic affair that slid out of the bottle with
> ease. *The cork was saturated about 50% of it's very short length with
> deep pruple residue. *After the initial bottle funk blew off the wine
> still had a pronounced,stemmy, funky green smell that reminded my of
> rotting grass clippings. *In the glass the wine was a cloudy medium-
> light red with a brickish cast. *Flavors were of bitter grape skins
> (there was a serious amount of residueclinging to all sides of the
> bottle) and old apples. *Clearly past it's prime the wine was still
> fiercly tannic which is not something that I remembered from it's
> youth. *Not sure if this was a cork failure (I opened the remaining
> three bottles to the same result) or if it was just not made to last.
> I did taste a few hours later and again this morning and the wine
> still had a bitter tanninc funk to it. *NR

surprised by the tannins, but those early synthetic corks had about a
90% mortality rate after 4 o 5 years, much less decade+
Supposedly some are supposed to be better now, but I generally regard
syn-corks as sign to drink with 2-3 years