Tonight I opened an old favourite with a bit of a surprise, and not a pleasant one. This Kreydenweiss I bought about 2 years ago and was enthralled with it, a wine from the "Vallee du Rhone - Costieres de Nimes" - this is a traditional and typical Rhone blend of Syrah, Grenache and Cinsault all farmed biodynamically ... but that is just the back story. This was a lovely wine two years back and I was hoping for the same now ... but there was disappointment to be had here. The initial sniff was spice, currants and a funky plastic note - with more swirling the plastic effect started to come through stronger (my wife called it out-house and refused to drink anymore beyond her first few sips, "It tastes better than it smells, but I can't get past the nose", she said setting the glass aside for the evening). I was not willing to give up on it so soon. The flavour was better than the smell with spicy black currant and black pepper. It also did not pair well with the Chinese food that appear at the door 20 minutes after we opened this bottle (it didn't just appear magically, we did order it). After dinner I returned to the wine. At this point the wine has been opened a little over an hour, and something miraculous happened - it was much better. The nose had turned more red fruit oriented with spice and pepper still lingering about; the plastic had disappeared. The palate had changed a bit too, it had smoothed out, there was still spice, black fruit and pepper there with a pleasant edge on the dry tannin-dominated finish. Well happy day - this turned out to be a better wine then it looked like it was going to be. Problem is, that even after my proclamation about how good the wine had become my wife was still not interested - I guess you never do get a second chance to make a first impression.
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