Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Disgorged wine

Friends Carol and Julie gave us a prezzie of a wine for lending the ute to them for moving prior to having major renos done on their house. It was a Tamburlaine 2001 Late Disgorged Cabernet Sauvignon, which, apart from tasting damn fine, got me totally intrigued by what on earth anyone was doing disgorging a wine and then bottling it and having the guts to then sell it. I mean, the last disgorgement of wine I did was after a particularly careless session a couple of weeks ago when too much of a good time with old mates led to a failure to drink enough hibiscus tea to counter the effects of the several bottles of red gorged during the evening.

Happily, I found that disgorging wine in the vigneron world is a much less disturbing process. The term 'late-disgorged' is English for récemment dégorgé, indicating a wine that has been kept on its lees for much longer than usual (up to as much as ten years) between bottling and disgorging. The wine feeds off its lees throughout this time, acquiring great complexity, depth and richness. The sharp intake of oxygen when the wine is finally disgorged (ie the temporary 'bottling cork' is pulled and replaced with a permanent Champagne cork, ready for shipping) adds a welcome note of freshness that highlights the wine's complexity.'

Which still leaves me a tad puzzled as my pocket Oxford French dictionary gives récemment as meaning recently which is not what the wine is, disgorged recently, that is. Ah well, another of those little linguistic licenses one lives with I suppose.

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