One of the things I would like to do when I am rich is join wine clubs. Not the kind of wine club where you and your friends all chip in 20 bucks, you make an appointment with Micheline for some advice on which wines to try, rent some tasting glasses and go potluck on the nibbles. What kind of a loser would be in that kind of wine club? (Answer: me).
No I'm talking about the kind of wine clubs where you receive periodioc shipments of scrumptious ageable wines right to your front door and never have to meet any of the other club members. No time commitments! Sounds like the best kind of club. Alas, these clubs are expensive to join and don't make much sense unless you have your own cellar. So, perhaps later in life.
Still, it's always a good idea to keep a list of wine clubs on hand, just in case I win the lottery. The first one on my present list is Corison. Corison is a small-output Cabernet Sauvignon producer in Napa known for the ageability and elegance of its wines. Since I love cab and am fascinating by the phenomenon of wine aging, it only makes sense for me to become a Corison Collector (she said, willing the money to fall from the sky).
Listening to the recent Restaurant Guys Radio podcast featuring Cathy Corison, the chemistry-major mastermind behind Corison cabs, reopened a psychic wound I sustained back in October when I was forced to cancel a scheduled visit to the Corison vineyard. And not just any visit, but a Friday morning, sit-down-and-nibble-and-taste visit, complete with tour! Oh how I loathed to make that call, but at a certain point, it became all too clear that we weren't going to be able to cover the final 300 miles of the drive from Portland to St. Helena in time we had remaining. Why did we ever decide to take the coast route? Well okay, it was for the views,
but were they worth missing a Corison visit? I may never know.
I did, finally, get to try a Corison cab on that trip though. We were nosing around a great little wine shop in Santa Fe -- stocked, according to the owner with "only stuff I like. No stuff I don't." -- when, by the grace of God, I spotted a half botlle of the 1997 vintage, which we drank in our RV a few nights later.
This was my first experience with such an old wine, and probably my best wine experience to date. Sadly, I was a little neglectful with tasting notes that day, but I do have written down that it was incredibly dark in colour, had no noticeable tannins (that was the coolest part) and tasted very plummy.
Next time I see a bottle of Corison I'm going to snatch it up. And when I'm richer, I'm going to be one of those lucky people who gets thrice-yearly deliveries of Corison cabs and stashes them away in her cellar. Except for the one bottle that I put aside for my own, personal, immediate, grilled-beef-accompanied, consumption.
