I occasionally spend time with “nécrovinophiles”, a word I invented to define the special and bizarre love some wine enthusiasts have for wine past their peak and dead for some time with only for coffin of the glass bottle and the cork, out of breath, which can no longer wait to disappear!
Although I can understand the historical, cultural aspect - I have trouble believing that one can enjoy drinking or even taste these corpses.
Indeed, how many bottles of wine kept too long end up - badly - in the sink? For even they are not even worth for making vinegar.
How many of these older wines kept in cellars whose sole interest is to be here to fill a “nice cellar” or to show off?
All 47s and 45s cannot claim being worth Cheval Blanc 47 or Mouton 45, and if there are exceptions to every rule, I am afraid that too many amateurs of old wines have forgotten that exception is precisely to be exceptional!
You would tell me, and it is the only excuse, that until having tasted, until having opened, you do not know! Sometimes there are miracles: I remember, it's true, drinking this bottle of 1937 Lescours, more than 50 years of age, which was extraordinary.
Perhaps, sweet wines hold better the road of time. And I do not deny there are some big surprises, but my concern is only for those who enjoy drinking these wines, too old and even when they are seriously dead, find them interesting. All sorts of tastes are in nature … so as beating and pain for masochists!
To put it simply, wine is born, peaks and dies, that’s the way it goes and that's why it affects us so much: perhaps it is similar to human life.
I easily admit that one can offer a bottle of the year of birth as a birthday gift to show love to a person. I also have in my cellar a few bottles of 1955 for Murielle, a few bottles of 1951 for me and other old vintages I often prefer to give than to open. I also was shocked drinking improbable bottles, the only thing I criticize, I repeat, is those who find all these qualities in wines that are obviously finished, dead!
Of course, those who trade in such antiquities are not to blame if they do their job correctly. After all, they are only traders who respond to some customers by offering wines way over the hill to actual clients. Their rarity and prices reached can help making a living from those corpses.
I
Although I can understand the historical, cultural aspect - I have trouble believing that one can enjoy drinking or even taste these corpses.
Indeed, how many bottles of wine kept too long end up - badly - in the sink? For even they are not even worth for making vinegar.
How many of these older wines kept in cellars whose sole interest is to be here to fill a “nice cellar” or to show off?
All 47s and 45s cannot claim being worth Cheval Blanc 47 or Mouton 45, and if there are exceptions to every rule, I am afraid that too many amateurs of old wines have forgotten that exception is precisely to be exceptional!
You would tell me, and it is the only excuse, that until having tasted, until having opened, you do not know! Sometimes there are miracles: I remember, it's true, drinking this bottle of 1937 Lescours, more than 50 years of age, which was extraordinary.
Perhaps, sweet wines hold better the road of time. And I do not deny there are some big surprises, but my concern is only for those who enjoy drinking these wines, too old and even when they are seriously dead, find them interesting. All sorts of tastes are in nature … so as beating and pain for masochists!
To put it simply, wine is born, peaks and dies, that’s the way it goes and that's why it affects us so much: perhaps it is similar to human life.
I easily admit that one can offer a bottle of the year of birth as a birthday gift to show love to a person. I also have in my cellar a few bottles of 1955 for Murielle, a few bottles of 1951 for me and other old vintages I often prefer to give than to open. I also was shocked drinking improbable bottles, the only thing I criticize, I repeat, is those who find all these qualities in wines that are obviously finished, dead!
Of course, those who trade in such antiquities are not to blame if they do their job correctly. After all, they are only traders who respond to some customers by offering wines way over the hill to actual clients. Their rarity and prices reached can help making a living from those corpses.
I
t takes all kinds to make a world: maternities as well as cemeteries.
I must admit that this article was already written for some time. I discussed this subject with friends, some close to this addiction, but only after the publication of an article in the last issue (or previous one) of the RVF, dedicated to a famous collector who quotes me with bitterness, so I wanted to post this post on my blog today. 
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