Respect Your Elders!

It will happen eventually to every lover of wine. At some point during our wine experiences we are presented with a bottle of wine that absolutely must be over the hill! The label has dried and faded to a yellow shadow of its former self. The vintage date conjures images of Nixon and Studio 54, not Bush Jr. and the information age. The contents inside have changed from a frothy bight red to a silky swath of color closer to a brick than a grape. The cork looks like the bread at the bottom of an open-faced roast beef sandwich.

At first the aromas range from muted to unpleasant to downright scary. But then it happens: Like sleeping beauty awakening after a decades-long nap the wine starts to revive. The aromas unfurl from their cocoon to reveal layer upon layer of haunting and seductive scents that are at once strange yet familiar, like an old friend you haven’t seen in a while. You know them well, yet you do not, as life has changed them just as it has you.

And the flavors! A masterstroke of beauty. A symphony of taste. This is not wine. This is a mature wine, ancient and evolved and at the perfect point for consumption. It feels unlike any wine that you have ever had. It tastes unlike any wine that you have ever had. It is a new experience, and you wonder why you had never had it before.

Or take all of the above and insert a slightly different result: Instead of a sublime creation of wine Nirvana, the wine has turned to vinegar and you have just spent 25 years hanging onto a bottle of Bordeaux just to watch it turn to dust before your very eyes.

Like all living things, wine has a lifespan that starts with infancy and proceeds through adolescence and adulthood towards old age and death. Because of factors in our market, style and just plain impatience, America drinks her wine mostly while the lovely libation is still just learning to walk. Many parts of the world take a more long-term approach, consuming their wine when they feel the wine is ready, not when it is available.

This is not to say that you should run out and buy a bottle of Pinot Grigio and hide it in your basement for the next ten years! Far from it. Very few wines have the stuffing and fortitude to age for more than a few years. 97% or so of all wine is best consumed within the first 3 years after vintage. But in that three percent a wine can change from hard and tannic to silky and smooth. Or from crisp and minerally to golden and delicious. Or from very good to incredible. The trick is to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.

Let’s start with the two components necessary for any wine to even think about aging: Acidity and tannin. Without at least one of these two components it is best to drink that wine now. Enjoy it now before it is too late. An eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die sort of thing. A high sugar content can also prolong the life of many a dessert wine. Tannins, acidity and sugar all act as preservatives and slow the oxidation process. It is this process that ages and evolves a wine, and also turns a bottle of wine left uncorked from good stuff to good heavens no!

But with cork in place the wine stays in a reductive state, and the oxidation process grinds almost to halt. During this time the wine continues to evolve and take on new flavors and aromas. Sediment forms in many wines as the color compounds combine with acids and fall to the bottom of the bottle. What is left is dead space where new flavor and aromatic compounds form, adding complexity to the wine. Many of these aromas and flavors cannot be duplicated in a young bottle of wine. They cannot be made; they must grow with the wine. They only come about the hard way, with years of quiet rest in a cool, dark place with a high humidity. (For more on storing wine please see our article Your First Cellar.)

There are wines all over the planet that can age gracefully and beautifully for years. While it may be difficult to separate the ones that will survive from the ones that won’t, high levels of acidity and tannin are always a good starting point. But overall a wine must have balance. There must be enough fruit to stand up to the levels of tannin or acids. There must be enough structure to preserve the wine for years while it rests slowly in the cellar.

In short it needs to be a well made wine. A wine lacking substance in any of these categories will fade away instead of growing more intense. A great vintage is one of the first things to look for. A long and steady growing season will provide more of the structure needed for a wine to survive years in the cellar, while a poor vintage may leave the wine lacking in the critical tannin or acid departments. An under ripe wine will taste under ripe now or in ten years, with potentially disastrous results. The vintage is often the best indicator when purchasing an older bottle of wine as to the health of that wine.

Another key to long-term cellaring is the producer of the wine. Certain wineries are known for cranking out powerful and age-worthy wines. This is not a hard and fast rule as even the best wine makers have troublesome vintages, but the odds improve when the winery has developed a reputation through years of success.

The next is the appearance of the bottle. If the level of the wine is lower than the neck of the bottle the wine may have been stored improperly and it may already be too late. Any sign of seepage down the side of the bottle may indicate the same. A wine that has been “cooked,” or stored at too high a temperature, may seep through the sides of the cork and down the bottle. A cooked wine will have a dirty brown color and will exhibit aromas and flavors closer to bourbon than a fine wine.

While the color of the wine will eventually turn from bright and lively to a more faded hue with hints of rust or orange colors at the rim of the glass, a wine that looks dark and murky may be too far gone. The same applies to wine whose color has changed too much. Eventually a white wine will darken to a golden hue. If it has turned orange, drinker beware! A red wine will lighten until it has a color of dark rust or bricks. It too may be a goner if too much of an orange hue is present.

Sediment is a naturally occurring phenomenon, but to a point. Any wine that has more than a slight amount of sediment at the bottom of the bottle may be flawed. It is best to stand an older bottle on end at least two days before serving, and some would say up to a month to allow the cork to dry for easier removal. A decanter will also be your best friend at this point. Pouring the wine into a decanter in front of a bright light or a candle will allow you to observe the levels of sediment. Stop when the sediment has reached the neck of the bottle. Using a port strainer and funnel is another great way to get the most out of your wine without being left with something to chew on.

Older wines often times will have off flavors or aromas when first opened, so it is a good idea to decant them at least an hour in advance. Sometimes it may take up to a day for the wine to come back to life. While this doesn’t help for tonight’s dinner, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Begging and pleading won’t help to retrieve a wine that has already gone down the drain.

Another key factor is storage. Has the wine been in a temperature and climate-controlled cellar? Or has it been on your kitchen counter for the last few years? Heat, light, vibrations, even loud noises will increase the level of oxidation in your wine, and thus shorten its life span. The best wine in the world cannot survive in the trunk of your car. This may seem extreme, but it just goes to show that wine is like many things in life, if you want them to last you must treat them with tender loving care.

Don’t be afraid to experiment. Wine is all about trial and error, and older wine is the same. You may prefer a young Crianza Rioja at two years of age to a Gran Reserva at ten, but without trying them both how will you know? A great way to check on the progress of your own wine is to buy by the case and then sample a bottle every once in a while. If you can’t afford to buy by the case, or don’t have the storage space buy three at a time. Try one now to determine if it is reaching maturity. Are the tannins still fiery? The acids still mouthwatering? If so back in the cellar you go. If not, maybe it is time to enjoy the other two as well. But when in doubt, drink it now! There is nothing worse than hanging on to a bottle of wine too long. That doesn’t do anyone any favors, you or the wine!

There is no exact science when trying to determine if a bottle will last for another twenty months or another twenty years, but each of these factors play into the lifespan of the wine. In the end it will be an educated guess. The result may be a few stinkers to go along with a few beauties, but it will be worth it. A fully mature wine that is at its zenith in terms of drinkability can be a wonderful if hard to come by experience. But all good things come to those who wait, especially in the world of wine.

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