A reader from Connecticut asks:
Which wines are meant to be aged and which are meant to be consumed right away?
How would I know how long to age a wine?
There's no short way to answer this... Knowing which wines are meant for aging is one of those things that comes with knowledge of grapes, wine making processes, and experience. The easiest way to know is to ask your wine seller.
Most wine made today, and virtually all of it under $15 a bottle, is meant to be drunk within a year or so of purchase. There is even a movement to put expiration dates on wine bottles. On the other hand, if you've ever tasted a wine that seemed overly strong and harsh, that dried out your mouth so you almost couldn't talk, it might well have been a wine that was opened before its time. It needed to mellow by aging. Wine made for aging will have stronger tannins because tannins decrease during the aging process (the muddy-looking sediment at the bottom of old bottles is actually tannin molecules that have bonded together and dropped out of the liquid). At the same time, the fruitiness of a wine made for aging needs to be in balance with the tannic structure, because the fruit, too, fades with time. With aging, all the elements of the wine have time to become harmonious and meld together, just as the ingredients in a stew that you simmer for hours on the stove will turn into a fantastic, gravylike amalgamation. This mellowing applies to certain white wines, too, even though they have very little tannin.
Certain grapes used for wine are almost guaranteed to need aging because of their high natural tannin levels. I'm thinking of the nebbiolo grape, which goes into Barolo in Piedmont. Cabernet Sauvignon, used all over the world, but classically in Bordeaux, is another example. Recently, due to advanced wine making techniques and research, it has become possible to soften the tannins and pump up the fruit during the red wine making process, allowing a wine that used to be meant exclusively for aging to be enjoyable right away. This pleases consumers who don't want to take the time and trouble to set aside wine for years.
And it's tricky to know what is the optimal moment for any wine. Wine lovers consider this a sort of game. Many buy six bottles or a case of the wine they want to age, put them away for a few years, then open one bottle each year to experience the transformation of the aging wine until they run out. Pretty geeky, but fascinating if you have the patience. There's fancy software you can buy, like Personal Wine Curator, to tell you when to drink the wines in your "collection," but for those of us whose collection is a few bottles stashed in a closet, general guidelines (very, very general guidelines, as aging depends on quality, vintage, and a host of other factors) like the chart featured on PWC's site, www.thewinecurators.com/vntgChart.html, can tell you how long to age your wines--or, perhaps more important, what wines not to age.
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