Generations Gone By — Krug’s, That Is

One of my favorite California reds is a blend called Generations. It’s the flagship wine from Charles Krug, better known for making jug wine since the forties and ejecting Robert Mondavi in the sixties after he had a fist fight with his brother and co-owner. (Peter Mondavi, the recipient of the left hook, still runs Charles Krug and recently changed the recipe for the Generations, which is why I don’t buy it anymore, but that’s another story.) In the bad old days, Generations was a cabernet-based wine that tasted as good as some of Napa’s most famous reds — at about a quarter of the price, probably because of the low profile of the Other Mondavi.

Anyway, three generations of my in-laws celebrated father’s day last Sunday, so I brought over a bottle from the 1997 vintage that I’d lovingly cellared for almost a decade. Tasting it made me think: why do people keep wine? Should they at all?

For how I appalled myself with my own answer, click here:

The answer is, for the most part, no. I know this sounds contradictory coming from someone who gutted her walk-in closet and filled it with bottles. But truth is, today most wine is made so it’s drinkable right away. Even in parts of the world (e.g. Bordeaux) known historically for making wines that are virtually unapproachable in their youth, the style is now to round things out a bit. So in most cases there’s no reason to delay gratification when it comes to wine. And when it comes right down to it, wine is about gratification. Certainly not price or prestige, so toss those considerations out the window when you’re considering whether or not to open that special bottle you’ve been hanging on to.

The second reason you should not keep wine is for the simple reason that it can go bad. I have nine bottles left of a case of expensive, normally long-lived Kistler chardonnay from the nineties. I keep uncorking a sample, hoping that it’s only the last three that have devolved into a yellow sludge tasting of stale caramel and vodka. But no go. I waited too long, and now whole lot is over the hill.

Like, alas, the 1997 Generations. Although it was from a great vintage in Napa, and although I remember it having plenty stuffing in its youth, the bottle we drank Sunday showed signs of falling apart. It was still rich and flavorful, but it has lost structure and felt a little flabby on our tongues. The fresh, beautiful cherry flavors I remember now tasted stewed; if I really thought about it, in my mind’s eye I saw a fruit compote dessert on a plastic tray in an assisted living facility. I kept a few sips in my glass and went back to it, and by the time I did, it had stopped short like Marlon Brando in The Godfather and toppled among the tomato vines.

But you know what? We loved it and drank every drop. It reminded us of one of my father in law’s favorite stories about visiting Krug back in the sixties, when its tasting room — an invention, by the way, of Robert Mondavi’s — was a tiny outbuilding with a picnic table, a staffperson, and two open bottles. It reminded us of the day my sister in law and I bought this very bottle; we were inspired to call him to solicit the Charles Krug story one more time. I reminded us of the time my other sister in law came across an expensive bottle of French Krug Champagne in our fridge and — thinking it was a cheapo Charles Krug sparkler, which I don’t even think they make — popped it open to enjoy out of juice jar. (Another reason not to hoard wine.) Because the wine had once been young, then mature, and now accident-prone, we were reminded that, like us, stepping carefully over my father in law’s oxygen tube that trailed out of the dining room, wine is alive, and like all living things has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Which leads me to the only exception to my new rule against keeping wine: sometimes you want to keep a bottle because of the memories. Along with dust in your closet, a cherished bottle of wine accumulates stories. And there’s no better way to set them loose than by uncorking it.