Tasting - The wine that opened my eyes (special edition)

Name: Alvear Solera
Variety: Pedro Ximinez 
Region: Andalucia
Country: Spain
Year: 1927
Price: $27

In the movie Sideways they talk about a bottle of wine that opens your eyes and changes your view, for me this was it. Every week this semester, my roommates and I go to Vintage Cellar for their wine tastings, and this time we got a store manager (possibly the owner) to administer our tasting. While the people at the rest of the table seemed to hurry through the tasting, we took our time, striking up a conversation with this man. At the end of it, he started talking about different wines and asked us if we wanted to taste 90 year old wine.

So I tasted this $90 year wine, in sweatpants.

And it completely changed my viewpoint on wine. The way they age it, where it comes from - these were all things that I was completely interested in. The fact that 90 years of other people have drank this wine literally blows my mind, and I am utterly in love with it. I felt the intense need to shake the administrators hand and say thank you after I drank it - I cannot stress how cool an experience this was.

This desert wine smelled fantastic. It smelled rich with a scent that lingered in your nose for a long time. But the taste is the best part. The flavor was coffee and toffee and chocolate all rolled into a great flavor that was rich and syrupy and heavy and supremely enjoyable. The administrator said that often when he and his wife are eating simple things like nuts and chocolate they will have a little bit of this and it pairs so nicely. This desert wine can only be drunk in small batches because of its extreme richness, but I am obsessed with it. This wine changed my view on wine.