| How and When to Age Wines | | | | By: Joe Janish |  Page 1 of 2 next >> |
Some of the most common wine questions asked by people are regarding the aging of wines, how to age wines, and if a particular wine should be aged, cellared, or kept in a deep crypt .
For example: “I just received a bottle of Califoakian Cabernet 1996 as a gift and wonder if I should drink it now or lay it down for a while?”
An entire book can be written on what wines should be aged and for how long. In fact, there are several on the subject, many of which go in to great detail. Also, you may notice that many of the wine “experts” include aging recommendations in their reviews—Wine Spectator, Robert Parker, Clive Coates, and Stephen Tanzer are a few that come to mind. Often, an expert will suggest that you cellar a wine for a few years. But why? And how does one know?
First of all, 90% of all wine produced is meant to be drunk immediately, or within two years. So really, all you have to worry about is the other 10%. Without getting too long-winded, following are a few general “hard and fast” rules to follow.
Wine Aging Rule 1: If the wine costs less than $25, drink it up.
Sure, there are some exceptions, but generally speaking, anything under $25 will not benefit from prolonged aging. There are many under-$25 wines whose imbalanced tannins or acidity will soften after a year or two in bottle, but don’t expect any mindblowing evolution—beyond two years, the wine is likely going downhill.
Wine Aging Rule 2: You won’t know whether to age a wine until YOU taste it.
Maybe this should be called the “personal preference” rule. As mentioned before, many wine experts will recommend a specific year to drink a wine. There are also many “vintage charts” available, that suggest whether certain wines should be held or drunk. However, that’s THEIR opinion, according to how they like wine to taste. These recommendations are an educated guess as to when a particular wine will be in perfect balance—when the fruit, acidity, tannins, and alcohol levels are all in sync. But YOU might like to drink a wine when it’s “big”—when it has strong tannins, or high levels of acidity. (Generally speaking, you age a wine so that these two components mellow somewhat, and allow the fruit to come “forward”, and thus bring the wine into “balance”.) Yes, the experts may know when a wine has reached its peak, but that doesn’t mean YOU have to like it at that point. That’s why you need to taste it, then decide whether or not to cellar it.
Well, gee, how the heck can you age a bottle of wine after you’ve opened it? You can’t, obviously (do NOT recork a wine and cellar it, unless you’d like to make expensive vinegar), but you can buy, say, 4 bottles, try one, then decide whether to cellar the other three. Many people buy a case or two of wine that they think might be worthy of aging, then taste one bottle every year to follow its evolution. When they hit a year when the wine is really rockin’, they drink up the case.
Wine Aging Rule 3: Don’t bother aging a wine if you don’t have the means to do so.
All wines mature fairly quickly in a typical household (68-72°F, frequent changes in sunlight and humidity), and shouldn’t really be kept more than five or six months in these conditions. Beyond six months (sometimes sooner, if there were very hot days inside), most wines will begin to deteriorate. Finer (i.e., expensive) wines that require aging need to be kept in a place that is constantly cool (50-60°F), dark, damp, and without excessive vibration. For most people, this is the cellar; for others, it is an artificial “cellar” such as you can find in the Wine Enthusiast catalog. (Note: do NOT store wines in your refrigerator for an extended length of time; though it’s a constantly cool temperature, there is little humidity, so your corks will shrink and the wine will spoil.)
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