Thursday, February 15, 2007

A taste of 1978

Today I had the most amazing wine - a 1978 Rioja Gran Reserva. That's nearly 3o years old.

1978 - the year the world's first test tube baby was born (in Manchester) and Pollyanna's nightclub in Birmingham was ordered to open its doors to black and Chinese people.

Kate Bush released Wuthering Heights and Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta were singing Summer Nights.

I can't remember what I was doing in 1978 but I was far too young for Grease and nightclubs.

So it's incredible, really, that all this history-in-the-making was going on when this wine was barely in the process of being created.

Presumably it's been re-bottled and re-corked over the years (the bottle is barely dusty and the label's in perfect nick) but how did the wine-maker back then know that it would taste so great today? That's pretty impressive forward-planning.

Something else I've enjoyed recently - though certainly not for ageing - was a handful of Auckland oysters. A work perk that I downed on the way home in the car...

3 comments:

Sarah said...

Nice to see we can provide fuel to fire your journey home!! Of course we serve them accompanied with Windsor blue cheese, lemon and red wine vinegar. Perhaps next time when you're not so starving from a hard night's labour. Look forward to seeing our intrepid Tawharanui journey blog, another NZ classsic of Afgahn's and the beach not to be missed. A winning combination!

thornton jones said...

Mmm. Oysters. Not sure about combining with blue cheeese though... The oysters in South London were good yesterday.

Trigger said...

Ok. Oysters schmoysters. Get over it, there's a 1978 on the table! Oysters any year, with cheap sparkling wine.....