Young Turning Old

It was a turning point for The Young One.  It’s an important day when you change from being a younger one to a mature one.  Of course it deserves a celebration, so we chose a fine fish place and headed down for a feed. 

With fish we had the bases covered with two young wines.  A 2011 Auburn Alexandra Central Otago Riesling was served on the cool side, which accentuated the flinty, minerally reductive characters, and lessened the fruit.  SWMBO and I thought we’d made a mistake choosing it, but a magical transformation occurred as it warmed up.  The flintiness dissipated, and wonderful florals and citrus fruits emerges, and the suggestion of sweetness and richness became definite.  We became much happier. 

The other young ‘un was a 2011 Neudorf Nelson Chardonnay, instantly gratifying, with plenty of rich citrus and stonefruit flavours and a good whack of oak and complexing notes from lees and things.  Just seamlessly rich and a wine with power, making a statement with a degree of class.  Both of these were more-ish, and we figured they’d improve and turn older in time with grace for the Riesling and a bit of decadence for the Chardonnay.

We’d kept a couple of oldies for this occasion, and it was a pleasure to see how they’d fared with their changing from young puppies to older and wizened dogs.  A 1990 Ch. Olivier Pessac-Leognan.  Not the grandest property, but offset by a great vintage.  Still dark, and vigorous with dark red and black fruits.  The secondary aromas and flavours quite integrated with the terroir of bricky-Graves character.  Still with fine and firm tannins, this was the wine to go with the selection of hard cheeses.  We’d expected this to have turned old, but no, this was still to enter its maturity plateau.

Then the piece de resistance, a 1992 Quinta do Vesuvio Vintage Port.  The Symingtons had just released wine from this special site with a stupendous 1990.  This 1992 was a lighter wine.  Opening it, it was still very dark indeed.  Lovely ripe berry fruits, true port, with red and black fruits.  Very supple and a deliciously soft, fine, fresh mouthful.  Some spirit bolstering it up a little. Quite classy for a middle weight.  It wasn’t great, but really, really nice and easy.  This too was young like the Young One.  It’ll go on and turn old with ease and without effort, no doubt just like the man.