Colossal cellar

Various wine societies will routinely plan their great evenings around the tasting of a significant vintage wine, although it means they must draw down their own cellars in order to share the contents among many.

While visiting a winery in Crimea at the beginning of this month, Russian President Putin and former Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi consumed a rare bottle of Spanish wine that had been imported into the region by a count during the reign of Catherine the Great. The wine was valued at around $150,000 Canadian, and the winery still has four bottles of this rare wine in their cellars—now probably worth 20 per cent more.

While I do not condone such flippant consumption, I marvel at the capacity of the great traditional wines to remain vibrant and flavourful when carefully stored.

Some time back, I wrote about the Great Cellar of Moldova, that is reputed not only to be the largest in size and capacity in the world, but also boasts the only set of traffic lights in a wine cellar. These caves were once home to Neanderthals. Tunnels were built in them by the British engineers before the Second World War. Ensconced deep under the rock prior to, and during, “Torch” (the allied invasion of North Africa), General Eisenhower was less than complimentary on the lack of warmth and extreme dampness that was a constant irritant to all the personnel who worked there. The humidity and size of the facility, however, combined with total lack of sunlight and a location unaffected by seismic activity, offer prefect conditions in which to cellar wine.

So I was somewhat taken aback when I read that there were plans afoot to convert the cellar. Size will matter in this case, since there are over 50 kilometres of tunnels. If fully developed, there would be capacity to house almost two million cases of wine.

Thirsty work.

THIS WEEK’S PICK
This week, I sampled Three Dog Winery’s Sweet Sister, a 2013 Late Harvest Vidal ($17.95). Created by proprietors John and Sasha Squair, this dessert wine is a blast of Scotch toffee, lychee, and Meyer lemon marmalade. It is a delicious accompaniment to this season’s desserts—or to finish a memorable meal shared with family and friends as a sipping wine. Yum.