It’s something to whine over

RETIRED editor of the Vryheid Herald, John Carnegie, is crying, but not because he’s on pension. He’s crying because he has finally got round to sorting out his neglected wine collection, and virtually every single bottle is “vrot”.

He says that he started collecting wines back in the early 1980s when he started work at Rebel bottlestore. “I’d just come back from living and working in England where I managed off-licences, what they call bottlestores, and had developed a taste and interest in wine. So here I started to drink, appreciate and collect our South African wines.”

Eventually John had accumulated about 200 assorted bottles wine, both fortified and unfortified, but he says that he stopped drinking wine regularly (he doesn’t know why), stopped buying it to add to his collection, and eventually after the collection had dwindled down to around 150 bottles, they ended up lying down, stacked one on top of the other and occupying two whole shelves at the bottom of a cupboard.

“The wine was lying down to keep the corks wet, the cupboard was dark and avoided sudden temperature fluctuations, but the problem became the corks,” he says. The corks rotted, wines leaked out, air got in and the wines oxidised to become undrinkable.

“It’s my own fault,” says John. “Most of the wine was not meant to be stored even in ideal conditions for 30 years. The whites should have been drunk within a year or two at most, the better reds maybe within five or seven years, maybe 10 years in exceptional cases.”

So far, John has poured the contents of about 50 bottles down the drain – for example, bottles of Roodezandt Cabernet 1982, Douglas Green Pinotage 1981, Chateau Libertas 1976 or 78 (he can’t remember which), Oude Libertas Cabernet 1980, Alphen Cabernet and Alphen Dry Red, both non-vintage but about 1980.

Each bottle has to a greater or lesser extent leaked. The very few exceptions include Bertrams Cabernet 1978 and Bertrams Shiraz 1978, now approaching 40 years old, and, John says, more than likely past their best.

Among the collection are some fortified wines – muscadels and hanepoorts – which have screw-cap closures and have survived. The higher alcohol of about 17% by volume, has acted as a preservative, and John says that the wines have darkened considerably and now have a “rich Christmas pudding” nose and taste to them, “a bit like old Madiera or Marsala wines”.

John’s final advice? If the wine-maker has released a wine for sale then it’s ready to drink, and very few wines will be exceptions. He says that if you do want to keep wines, then buy more than one bottle, store them in as perfect conditions as you can, and then regularly open and drink one of them “to see how they’re doing”.

That way, you won’t end up pouring wine down the drain,

That way you’ll not end up like John – dronkverdriet.

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