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Have you ever had a bottle of inexpensive wine you just forgot about? Like, for a really long time? Usually your plonk just turns into plonk, but occasionally, good karma will grant you a boon.

I noticed the other day we had two bottles of Perrin Reserve Cotes du Rhone. One was from 2004, and the other from 1999. (For perspective, Sonnet and I hadn’t even met in 1999, much less started buying wines together.) I don’t know where the 1999 came from - probably someone brought it for a party and it went in the back somewhere. Anyway, she had a craving for Beef Bourguignon, and needed a red wine. Usually Perrin Reserve sells for around $8-$10, not the sort of wine you usually age. But the 1999 was either bad, or it wasn’t, and if not, maybe it would be good for her sauce. You never know…

Mmm. I’m not in the habit of holding $8 wines for up to 8 years, but heck, this one turned out just fine. (Even with the lousy, lousy storage conditions at our Arlington house all those years.) In the glass, its age was immediately obvious - paler red color, with a beautiful brown rim. And the taste had a lovely, complex minerality to it that I didn’t expect at all. But the best part was the Beef Bourguignon - half a bottle of this made Sonnet’s sauce absolutely magnificent. We were loving every second of it.

Halfway through dinner we decided to open the 2004 bottle (needed more wine, don’t you know). By contrast, the newer wine (albeit 3 years old) seemed brash - rather tannic, with more fruit (almost no fruit in the older version), but no finesse. Not bad, but not heavenly either. That’s the difference that age can make, even in so-called cheap wine.

Of course, not every wine can age eight years - I had assumed this one might have declined rather than improved. Perrin Reserve, it turns out, is produced by the same family that owns Chateau de Beaucastel, one of the top houses (if not the top house) in Châteauneuf du Pape. Good to know!