Look what turned up in a recently acquired wine collection!
A little while back I bought a few cases of very old bottles of wine from the basement of a longtime Portlander whose family once came from San Francisco. Having finally had the chance to sort through the collection, I was amazed and delighted to find these four bottles of French Rhum. Two have labels and two don’t. All are at respectable fill levels.
We opened one of the two without a label just to test it. It ended up being more than a mere test because now the bottle is nearly emtpy. Inside the glass the color had a nice dark amber. There is a sherry-like quality along with a mellowed sugar (Cane or Molasses?) on the pallet. Plenty of acidity and sugar but very smooth and mellow. One of the most interesting things I have ever tasted. This bottle we opened has no date but the other bottle sans label appears to say 1903. One of the bottles with label clearly says 1895. What fun!
We opened the bottle while hosting a winter beer tasting (It’s July) and earned lots of praise from our guests. We would love to learn more about these bottles of rum so please let us know if you recognize the labels or if you have any experience with 100+ year old martinique/St. Lucie rums produced in Bordeaux and imported into San Francisco.
Portland Wine Storage is Going Greener!!!
Check out our living green roof now in bloom! 
And a close up…
One of the views of big pink across the river…
We are probably the first and only "green" wine storage in the nation which is pretty cool. All 20,000 sq. ft. of our roof is now "living". Next time you’re down at Wine Storage poke your head in the office and Joe or I will be happy to take you up the roof to take a look.
We are also working on our water reclamation system so we can recycle rain water to flush our toilets and water the roof. I’ll spare you the pictures on this one.
Oh yeah, the shameless plug in this vein: if you haven’t already, check out our organic / biodynamic wine club at purvinewines.com.