Memorable Bottles Sorted Into Two Boxes

Some wine-lovers keep a cellar.
Almost all wine-lovers cradle a collection of memorable bottles.
Vinous memories are our treasures. They are revelations recalled. They are the delight we hope to experience again. They are our fish-tales.

What makes a bottle of wine memorable?
It can be its link to an occasion.
It can be that it holds a place in our personal history.
It can be the setting of its opening.
These wines fit into the first of my two boxes of memorable bottles.
Wine is a frequent player at life's important moments. The sense of smell – so much apart of enjoying a wine, and so entangled with the sence of taste – is powerfully linked to memory. Sometimes remembering an event triggers a memory of its scent or flavour... and just as often, the reverse.

The second box holds bottles remembered more for the magic of the wine itself. It isn't necessary for such a wine to be grand. What it needs it to be is interesting, striking, beguiling, fascinating, exciting...I'm going to spend the next while digging in this second box. In that way, this article will grow...

I'll start with a Producttori del Barbaresco (1996).
There are certainly much grander wines produced in this sub-region of Piedmont (north-western Italy). This was "just" the basic multi-vineyard bottling of Barbaresco's largest co-operative cellar.
In my mind, Barbaresco is nestled in the foothills of the Italian Alps. (The name Piedmont comes from the Italian for "foot of the mountain"). In the autumn its vineyards are wrapped in fog over fall colours. (Nebiollo, the red grape which becomes this wine, takes its name from the Italian for fog: nebbia).
In my glass, the wine was the colour of pecan shells and developing a mature orange-brown hue. It smelled richly of red berries and a flower-strewn forest floor. Our first kiss was full of tart red berries (cranberries & raspberries), followed by aspects of minerals, spice (pepper & allspice), and some of that forest floor. Over a long finish the palate returned the pure flavour of red fruit, until time extinguished this too.
Am I exaggerating?
How do you judge truth in a description of flavour?
--My favourite bit of wine hyperbole comes from another great Italian region. Of a wine produced from an exceedingly rare cluster of Tuscan vines (survivors of a late 19th century epidemic which destroyed the roots of almost all of Europe's vines), it has been said that its drinking is: "like listening to the earth sing to the sky".
Can't that, grasping at the indescribable, claim a bit of truth? --

From Barbaresco, my mind wanders across northern Italy from east (Piedmont) to west (Veneto)...
In a precious 1oz sample of Recioto della Valpolicella (Monte Delle Fontane, 1998), I met the sweet version of the better known Amarone.
This wine was a deep, browning, purple-red. Its nose was an overflowing handful of black cherries, with a definate rancio (sherry-like) note. Each sip began similarly, tasting of plump black cherries, with subtler rancio character. Richness – mouth-coating flavours and medium sweetness – was balanced by a delightful zip of acidity. Looking for a word to describe the finish, “leisurely” seems as good as any.Recioto (and its sister Amarone) are made from partially dried grapes. In the case of Recioto, the fruit is harvested from lower parts of the valleys where the grapes are often affected by "noble rot" (botrytis). This desirable mould robs the grapes of moisture, and it adds a peticular flavour to the crush... it also takes us to a third bottle in my box: a Tokaji Aszu.

Like many of the world’s greastest dessert wines, Tokaji Aszu is produced from grapes effected by that “noble rot”. The oddity of wine from rotted grapes added curiosity to my first encounter with a Tokaji, its flavours added delighted wonder.

“Red Label” Tokaji Aszu Five-Puttonyos (1999) was a rich golden colour, drifting towards orange and amber. Its nose was subtle, but fascinating: apricots stewed in spice (cinammon and nutmeg), with an earthiness which eluded descriptors until I settled for a rather vague note of velvety moss. Upfront, each sip was sweet, creamy and tasted of spiced apricots. This was followed by dramatic waves of lemon curd. As these waves cleansed the wine’s sweetness, there was an whispered echo of that earthiness. A very long finish had me swallowing, swallowing and re-swallowing in pursuit of sips which already slipped down my gullet.