I was culling through some wines in my cellar and came upon a couple of bottles of 1997 Bonny Doon Le Cigare Volant which is Randall Grahm's hommage to CNP. The wine was bought on release and stored at
55F. It's a blend of Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault and Mourvedre although any resemblence to CNP is purely accidental. I recall drinking the wine on release and enjoying the California fruit flavors that reminded my more of Village Beaujolais than CNP. The synthetic cork was a fairly thin plasctic affair that slid out of the bottle with ease. The cork was saturated about 50% of it's very short length with deep pruple residue. After the initial bottle funk blew off the wine still had a pronounced,stemmy, funky green smell that reminded my of rotting grass clippings. In the glass the wine was a cloudy medium- light red with a brickish cast. Flavors were of bitter grape skins (there was a serious amount of residueclinging to all sides of the bottle) and old apples. Clearly past it's prime the wine was still fiercly tannic which is not something that I remembered from it's youth. Not sure if this was a cork failure (I opened the remaining three bottles to the same result) or if it was just not made to last. I did taste a few hours later and again this morning and the wine still had a bitter tanninc funk to it. NR