I have six Foch vines in my front yard that I planted in 2001. In 2003 I had enough grapes to make two bottles of wine. I don’t know what happened to one of the bottles, but I decided to open the remaining one tonight. It looks like it is past its prime. The hue of the wine at the edge of the glass is brown, which usually means it is too old. The initial smell was a little yeasty, with hints of vinegar and brettomyces. There were also some latent bubbles foamed on pouring. The flavor indicated what the smell did, although not as nearly pronounced. I probably should have opened this bottle a year ago. I think I am still going to drink it, just because it’s the only one I have left. There are hints that this was a somewhat decent wine at one point. It also seems that it would have made a better wine had it been done in a semi-dry style. I have two or three bottles of 2004 “Front Yard Foch”. The 2005 and 2006 batches were all exposed to too much air during aging and were summarily thrown away. The 2007 batch is in secondary fermentation on the kitchen table and probably needs to be racked soon. I think part of the problem is that in our wine making, we tend to get lazy and don’t rack soon enough after secondary and so the wine begins to pick up some off flavors and smells.
