One Last Fling With An Old Flame - PRP's Egri Merlot 2000

When Sue and I first became involved with PRP International Wines, our main focus was on German White wines, mostly in the sweeter vein like Rieslings. Eventually over time, our palates matured a bit and we began 'experimenting' with reds. Our wine consultant Rosie knew our palates well, and suggested that we start with some of the later harvest reds, since they were less dry.

One of our first purchases in this vein was a Hungarian red from 2000. Made of Ausbruch grapes grown in the Eger region of Hungary, the grapes were picked in late October, fermented and then oaked for only 8 months. The combination of the late harvest and the limited oaking let the wine retain it's natural fruityness, yet the initial impact would fade to a lovely tanin and oak finish, as if the wine were confused as to it's purpose.

We initially bought half a case, which we consumed rapidy. Egri Merlot 2000 (or Schizophrenic Red as we began calling it) quickly became our favorite wine.

When it was time to place our next order, we were saddened to find that PRP had sold out of our beloved Egri Merlot 2000, but Rosie had other wines for us to try which we ended up buying and enjoying. But, we always hoped that more Egri Merlot might find it's way to us.

Eventually, we attended a warehouse sale and were giddy to find that PRP had received a pallet of Egri Merlot. However, Rosie advised us that buying it would be a crap shoot - the natural cork in the bottles had begun to force their way out of many of the bottles that they had examined. Normally I wouldn't have considered buying wine like this, but Rosie offered to buy back the wine if we got it home and it was 'corked'. Thus, we picked through some boxes and found 6 that appeared to be fine and hoped for the best.

When we opened the first bottle, it appeared fine - color was good, aroma was good, yet it just didn't taste 'right'. It was good mind you, just not as good as it used to be. A second bottle opened a few weeks later was the same, if not just a bit 'funkier'. We decided to just cut our losses and return the remaining bottles to PRP and take something else, which we did. Somewhere along the line, we exchanged 3 bottles of the Egri Merlot 2000 for some Travicello (sp?) and were happy.

Later on, we discovered that we had left one bottle of the Egri Merlot 2000 in our non-functional wine fridge (by non-functional, I mean that the internal temp only goes down to the mid 50's when on full blast - it's more like a wine humidor). It was removed and put into a 6 bottle wine holder placed in the middle of our dining room table and ignored.

Today, we ran out of things to drink. I mean, there ain't nothing here to drink except Milk dated 11/12 (today's the 18th) and tap water. Finding neither to my liking (and not wanting to drink any of the 'good stuff') I looked around for something to imbibe. I discovered the 'corked' Egri Merlot 2000 and decided "Why not? I can always add sangria mix to it!" and prepared to open it. The cork appeared to be completely inside the bottle, not slightly ejected like the others we had returned, yet the foil had a dark ring around the inside and the cork itself looked cracked and stained. Not a good sign. Use of the rabbit revealed a different story completely - the cork was completely intact, and what looked like a crack was a natural fault in the cork itself. Could it be?

Color is perfect, smells sweet and wonderful. First sip....

Yum.

Ooooh baby I've missed you so. I know you're only in town for one night, so lets make the most of it. It'll be just like old times...