Caymus Special Selection 1992

I kind of hate opening old bottles of wine. The corks inevitably are halfway knackered, and you just know that no matter how carefully you try, the bastard is going to split and you'll end up having to fish out the remains. One of the best investments I ever made was in a Cistercian Monestary in Poblet, just up the road from the Grans Muralles vineyard in Conca de la Barbera, Catalunya, Spain. For the princely sum of four euros (at the time just over a quid) I got a Butlers Thief aka Ah-So wine knife. Consisting of two thin prongs, one slightly longer than t'other the idea is to carefully slide them between the cork and the bottle, thereby trapping the cork between the prongs. Then said cork can be carefully extracted without any tell tale holes, so the domestics can consume your prized claret and replace it with Hungarian plonk. I usually use it all the time now for older bottles, because it is much more reliable.

Anyways, I decided not to use it tonight for the Caymus because the cork actually looked in decent knick and it still felt firm on top. Mistake! Bloddy thing split in two and I ended up fishing the other half out with the worm from a longer screwpull corkscrew. But it was well worth the effort. Upon opening the wine had rich black fruit aromas with mature overtones, earthyness and a hint of stewed fruit. Over time it developed richer aromas more xmas pudding like than before. Ive only got one more bottle to go, then its gone.