WTN: 2001 Rosenblum Mourvedre Continente Vineyard

[Ernie in Berkeley]

On opening, a rich, deep texture, with some slate-y Petite Sirah underlying tones emphasized by the still-purplish color. Developed into dark chocolate and cherry, round and oddly lacking acidity, but not particularly flabby. Some other dark fruit, maybe figs, after a while. Muted nose without any of the typical Mourvedre funk.

I was curious about the acidity, so I pulled out my pH meter and took a reading: 4.54! I didn't believe it, so I recalibrated the device and got around the same thing, after a sanity check with a stock solution. Wines above around 4.0 pH are usually so flabby that you'd think they were mixed with baking soda, and since the protective benefits of sulphur dioxide diminshes exponentially with rising pH, shouldn't be expected to last very long at all. 4.5 is the usual pH for bottled distilled water.

All in all, a very pleasant sipper on a cold fall evening. I'll keep the remaining bottle for another five years to see how it develops.

[Otto]

I should get myself a PH meter also. Sounds like a fun gadget for us acid heads!

[Ernie in Berkeley]

Well, acidity is a complicated thing. There's titratable acid (TA) and pH, and they have only a weak relationship. Most references seem to agree that most of the acidity in flavor comes from the TA, so the meter won't help much. pH is most useful in determining sulphur dioxide requirements, which is why this was an interesting example: how can wine with such a high pH (= very low effective SO2 content) still be so bright after five years? Rosenblum must be using some fairly rigorous sterile filtering before bottling.