Diary of a Shopkeeper, 28th September

Good friends from Edinburgh are visiting this weekend. Jimmy and Carol are not just friends, but wine friends. More than that, they’re the people who introduced me to wine, 27 years ago. I don’t think either of them came from a wine drinking background, any more than I did, but at just the right moment a friend had poured them a glass of something decent, voiced a few thoughts and impressions, and opened a door to a whole new world. In 1998 they did the same for me. If it hadn’t been for Jimmy and Carol, I wouldn’t have become fascinated by wine, and I wouldn’t have revived the old family business of Kirkness & Gorie. I have a lot to thank them for. So whenever they visit I dig out some interesting bottles to open for them.

This time I decided we would have a game of Old Wine Roulette. This is an amusement of my own devising. The rules are very simple, and there’s only one difficulty: you have to start preparing 10 or 20 years before you intend to play.

Most wine is made to be consumed young, within a year or two of vintage. It’s fruity, fresh, and ready to drink without any ageing to let harsh tannins soften. Some good wines, however, have the capacity to mature in the bottle for years, even decades. Red wines tend to last longer than white wines, because the tannins that come from the red grape skins contribute to a robust structure that aids ageing. White wines that do age tend to be sweet ones, like Sauternes from France or Trockebeerenauslese from Germany.

These are generalities. Individual bottles can vary enormously. It’s not just what was put in the bottle back in the winery that matters, but how the bottles have been treated since. Has it been stored in over-warm conditions? This can “cook” the wine and dull its freshness. Worse, has it been stored somewhere that veers between too hot and too cold, like an uninsulated shed? That speeds up the ageing process considerably, and can make a five year old wine taste like a 50 year old one.

The biggest culprit when it comes to spoiling wine is something the winery itself put in: the cork. Corked wine is caused by a fungal infection in the bark of the cork tree. Producers have worked hard over recent decades to minimise its presence, and these days it affects only a small percentage of corks – maybe 2%.   It was more prevalent in the past, however. And, while a wine that has been in contact with an infected cork for a year or two might only take on a slight taint, a wine you’ve been guarding for 10 or 20 years could be ruined by lengthy exposure. Even a cork that hasn’t been tainted by fungus can be your enemy: if it has dried out and shrunk a little, oxygen can creep in, turning your lovely fruity wine to something between furniture polish and vinegar.

Hence the name Old Wine Roulette. Like Russian Roulette, you never know whether you’re going to be lucky – or unlucky.

So it was with some trepidation that I opened last night a 21-year-old Australian white wine: Stonier’s Reserve Chardonnay from just outside Melbourne, 2004 vintage. The winery had had the wisdom to seal it with a screwcap, so I didn’t have to worry about it suffering from cork-taint. But online guides suggested I should have drunk it 15 years ago… They were wrong! It was wonderful: full-bodied, packed with orchard fruit flavours, underpinned by toasty oak. It went perfectly with some halibut from Jolly’s and a cream sauce. A win at Old Wine Roulette!

How would the reds fare? Emboldened by the success of the Australian white, I opened next a red from Western Australia: Plantagenet’s Cabernet Sauvignon, 1994 vintage. To see how the old world stood up to the new, I opened the oldest wine of the night, a Cabernet-based Bordeaux called Clos du Marquis, from 1984. Both wines were sealed with corks, and both corks split and broke up, even as I pulled them out with care. But a crumbly cork does not indicate a tainted cork, just that age has taken its toll: the wines were clean. They were not equally good, though. On this occasion, the Australian was tired and lacking in fruit. We drank it with pleasure, but not excitement. The Bordeaux was a different story though: purple in the glass, exploding with blackcurrant aromas, and long and silky on the palate. A great match for the beef cheek I bought from Donaldsons and slow cooked for three hours.

I’m fortunate it having old bottles like these to open, but it isn’t too hard to do. Years ago I was at a trade tasting in London. I expressed astonishment and appreciation at how good the 20-year-old wine an importer gave me was. ‘I wish I could drink old wines like that,’ I said.

‘You can,’ he replied. ‘Just buy a few bottles of the current vintage and wait.’

The wine importer who uttered those wise words was David Gleave, founder of multi-award-winning importer Liberty Wines. He knows what he’s talking about!

The old wines we tried last weekend weren’t the cheapest when I bought them 10 or so years ago; most of them probably cost about £12 or £15. Now, though, they are either completely unavailable, or many times that price. I’m not interested in buying wine as an investment, but if you have space and patience, buying it with the intention of not drinking it for 10 years can be fascinating and rewarding. If you‘re lucky!

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 25th September 2025. A new diary appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations, and occasional small corrections or additions.