Yard Sale find - help for a novice?

[stevew]

Not knowing wine very well, I'm not sure what you are looking for in a taste description. I have only had "good" wine a couple of times in a restaurant and this was equal to those. (Don't ask me what they were, I have no idea). As I understand it, when wine goes bad it gets a vinegary taste to it, I did not notice any with this wine. It just seemed like a very smooth red wine to me, very slightly sour, no alcohol taste like you get with cheap wine. When I first opened it I let it breathe for about 20 minutes, I thought I noticed a slightly bitter aftertaste that disappeared after I let it sit longer. One thing about these bottles -- even though they were in this shed, I'm not sure how long they had been in there. A couple of years I'm guessing, because the guy's mother had died about three years ago. There were a bunch of empty bottles also and they were all in a box that had cobwebs all over it. It looked like they had been moved from somewhere else several years ago.