The Unsampleables: Two Gorgeous Wines You’ll Never Be Able to Taste

The Wines

Melville Sta. Rita Hills Viognier 2005

Qupé “Lazy Acres Cuvee” Santa Barbara County Syrah 2004 

The Judgement

To paraphrase the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime”:

And you may ask yourself, “Why can’t I taste these?”
And you may ask yourself, “Where is that large syrah bottle?”
And you may tell yourself, “I’ll read this whole thing anyway.”
And then may say to yourself, “My God, what have I done?!”

(Please continue below. It’ll be fun.)

In my experience, older and over-aged wines often emulate dust-covered archaeological finds, mainly those unearthed near Roman bathhouse privies. Elderly grape-based inebriants tend to pollute the palate and exude offense rather than their presumed original delights, having long since decayed like a Ferris wheel in Chernobyl. They’ve transformed into rusted atrocities that inspire strident condemnation as well as no further invites to future events for the collector who smugly shared them with others but didn’t take a bullet for the team by tasting it first.

Since moving to Santa Ynez two years ago, surrounded by the astonishing confluence of masterful liquids that dazzle me with their superbity, I’ve experienced two relatively ancient, ridiculously long-lived, and “Wish I’d shared this with more friends” bottlings that ratcheted up the sensorial expansiveness that a geriatric vino can achieve, and that, as a geriatric, I can applaud. I’m still astonished by this duo.

(1): Melville Sta. Rita Hills Viognier 2005

Chad Melville was kind enough to offer me a bottle of a 19-year-old viognier when I stopped by the winery as a mere tourist (but longtime fan) in spring 2024. I wanted to sample new releases and was writing an article about the grape, but had been out of the industry loop, and sadly learned that the varietal was no longer produced at the estate.

He came out to greet me, having heard from his staff that I was slurping and expectorating on the luxurious patio (though in my defense, I WAS using a bucket), and we gabbed for some time, enjoying a lengthy meander down remembrance lane. Towards the end of my visit, he momentarily excused himself and then reappeared with a bottle of the 2005 viognier for me to take home.

I was truly appreciative of Chad’s librarial offering but imagined that this white would be more of a nostalgic curiosity bereft of its original vigor, much like the parrot in the famous Monty Python sketch. (“It has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to meet its maker. Bereft of life, it rests in peace!”) I’d mentally written this bottle’s eulogy before even tasting it — a mistake I won’t be making again anytime soon!

When I popped it open several months later and selfishly sampled it on my own one random evening, the only sorrow I felt was that I’d foolishly decided to share it strictly with myself. It was glacier-like, frozen in its original state with no hint of degradation, and instead effusively exhibited the libidinous viscosity of a vio straight off the bottling line.

Yes, it was labeled at 16.7 percent alcohol, which is what probably preserved it: G-damn, what succulence, what immersively sumptuous levels of peachiness and tropicality, and the length across the palate revealed nothing but limitless decadence while somehow restraining itself within the bounds of public (or private) decency statutes.

Chad had been very kind to offer it to me, and I sent him a thank-you note along with my astounded impressions. This sounds smug, but I really wish you could sample it. Odds are against that ever occurring, as Chad’s stock on a now 21-year-old white in the archives at Melville Vineyards is undoubtedly minimal, if in existence at all. 

Please don’t ask him. His generosity, as well as the wine’s bodaciousness, echo in my cranium to this day. They help drown out the other voices.

(2) Qupé “Lazy Acres Cuvee” Santa Barbara County Syrah 2004 

(67 percent Alisos Canyon Vineyard and 33 percent Black Oak Vineyard: from magnum)

More recently, just before Christmas, I attended an annual pre-holiday dinner with a small and tight group of fellow wine-loving fiends, and though we were only six in attendance, there were three magnums to guzzle.

I brought the Qupé syrah magnum listed above, a bottling I was fortunate to blend alongside syrah maestro Bob Lindquist himself back in 2006, when I was the wine guy at Lazy Acres. He had the sacred vineyard ingredients so dialed in that even an imbecile (like me) could produce a gregarious and uplifting assemblage such as this, and he was kind enough to allow me to tinker with varied ratios and the multitude of sites within his quiver to fashion what I thought was extraordinary.     

(Two decades pass.) 

Bob held a library sale at the vast ABC winery/warehouse in Santa Maria on a rain-soaked day back in the April of last year, and as I entered the mud bog of an entrance, I was confident that SoCal AAA would have to dig my Mazda3 out of the soggy as $hit sludge path leading to the monumentally-sized, historic facility that was well off of Santa Maria Mesa Road. I knew I should’ve driven my monster truck instead. I slid and careened and stomped on the gas when necessary to arrive intact at the familiar weathered cathedral where I nabbed a parking spot.

There was an absolute legion of open bottles to try, and in the midst of all of them, I spotted this sole magnum sitting untouched, unopened, and pristine, all on its lonesome, and swooped it up with elbows swinging, though no one else was near. I cornered Bob toward the end of the event, and lauded the numerous age-worthy efforts that he’d produced and had made available that day. Gracious as always, he was glad I’d snagged the big-assed bottle.

When I popped it open at the Xmas gathering, as is often the case, a slight seepage and mushy cork were foreboding hazard signs, but the deep color and explosive bouquet proved immediately prophetic: The 2004 was in a supremely purple-fruited peak zone with at least a decade of prime drinkability ahead of it!

As it got passed around, the hyperbolically positive “huzzahs!” and laudatory pronouncements rang out from all attendees at the dinner table: Deeply aromatic, with Northern Rhone complexities of multivarious fresh herbs, freshly ground black pepper, hints of expertly cured salumi, and the salaciously penetrating dark berry-centric roundness shocked us all.

I fled out to my friend’s front courtyard to email Mr. Lindquist in the chilly December air to thank him for preserving that single magnum, along with having forged my feverish syrah obsession long ago in the mid-1980s, when his Qupé Central Coast became my go-to crimson accompaniment with most meals.

After expressing my appreciation to him, I then returned to dinner. As the conclave descended into its darker hours, a vanilla-laden 125-proof bourbon led me, as well as several other guests, into a dreamy, intoxicated realm as we accompanied the high-octane whiskey with mini-cupcakes in a sucrotic finale. 

This evening, near the end of 2025, was thunderous fun, from what I can recall after the distillates appeared. Fortunately, casualties were minimal and friendships and marriages remained mostly intact.

Ultimately, what did I learn from tasting and adoring these two ancient vinous anomalies last year? Well, my cynical, pessimistic nature was transmogrified, stupefied, and flabbergasted, and this has minimized the typically rigid and condemnatory mindset I’ve long maintained with regard to presumably exhausted, defunct bottles.

I have to revive an old viewpoint that I once asserted but later abandoned, and I suggest as a worthy rule for all: “Anticipate each wine as potentially wondrous when popping the cork, unless it proves itself otherwise. If its acridity fills you with disappointment and disgust, seek immediate bloodthirsty vengeance … or at least a refund from the frightened shopkeeper.”

“Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.”

Vita brevis, carpe vino.