Vin Collections

As an addendum to the previous post, I wanted to share something interesting which happened over the weekend. A friend was kind enough to open a bottle of 1988 Bonny Doon Le Cigare Volant which she had brought to dinner.  I inquired about the history of the bottle and was told by the owner that she had purchased it upon release from the winery tasting room (she is from Santa Cruz).  She had been the bottle’s only owner, and it had been stored horizontally, in her cellar, and in the original wooden box for the duration. The bottle was even still wrapped in the original red packing tissue when she brought it out. As far as provenance goes, it is hard to establish a chain-of-custody which is much better than that. However, she admitted that it had been moved several times and had not always been stored in 100% ideal conditions. This included a couple of power-outages on warm days, and a few seismic temblors. Read the rest of this entry »