hartford court zinfandel

HARTFORD COURT ZINFANDEL

RUSSIAN RIVER VALLEY, 1994

I decanted this bottle since it was over 15 years old.

It was dead. Virtually no fruit left and what was there was off. Good thing I only paid $10 for it. I guess it was worth a shot in the dark. I had purchased about 10 btls. of old vintage wines from a wine shop that was selling off a gentleman's entire cellar. There was well over 100 cs of wine being sold at this wine shop. The man was going to jail for some reason and needed the extra cash.

Most of the btls I purchased were $10, with a few being $20.

I had never really drank older vintage wine before, so I wanted to experiment and see what I might find.

I've tasted about 5 of the bottles so far. A couple were ok, a couple were off, like this one. I did have one AMAZING btl of J Phelps, "Le Mistral"- a Southern Rhone-style blend of mostly Syrah and Grenache, and smaller amounts of Carignan, Petit Syrah, and Alicant Bouche - out of CA, near Monterey. I don't recall the vintage of that btl for sure, but I think it might have been a '96. I do love French wines in general and this one had it going on, so...