In praise of Uncorked

 

You may think you know all the good wine shops in town but then another emerges. Not a new one, a shop that has been there all the time but you just haven't come across it yet.

Uncorked is in the City, well inside the Square Mile. Copthall Avenue EC2 is narrow street with no parking so we hadn't ever driven past or had any pretext to go there. Now we have because it is a very interesting destination. 

Thanks to Winesearcher we identified Uncorked as the nearest place we could get our hands on a bottle of Ferraris' Ruche. It's a while back so we don't remember which source was singing the praises of Ruche but we remembered we hadn't been impressed that one time we gave it a try.

'Ruche not OK' was what we wrote, perhaps unfairly?

Checking 'Native Italian Grape Varieties (by Ian D'Agata), we read that one of the best producers was Ferraris, hence our foray to Cophall Avenue.

The shop is a treasure trove of interesting wines. The two gentlemen presiding were very well informed and we came away with not just our Ruche but a Mersequera and a bottle of Cincinnato's Nero Buono to replace the one we had bought in Rome. We could have bought so much more.

We had enjoyed a Merseguera at Yarza Restaurant in Valencia and wanted to see if this variety is good in general or only in the case of that bottle. El Enhebro's Merseguera might have been blended with Verdil. It was not the same. 'Good enough but not enough good' as they say in Russia. 

As for the Ruche, on opening the bottle we thought we were getting the 'Ruche not OK' confirmation so tannic and unlovely was the impression. However, by the next evening a transformation had taken place and the wine was simply gorgeous. Never have we experienced such a transformation thanks to a little bit of oxygen. It just shows.