Ageworthy Wines

We often hear that fine wine improves with age. I am sure that somebody said it first and if I look hard enough on social media, I will likely find someone who will say they were there. All kidding aside, however, the statement should probably be closer to many well-made wines change in ways that many wine connoisseurs find appealing up to a point.

That would make for a really bad internet meme, though. What in the world does it mean? How do we know?

When a wine is young, it tends to fully express the natural flavors of the grape and less so of the terroir. As the wine ages, a lot of the fruit expression regresses while the expressions of the terroir come through.

Okay, what does that mean?

If you like your wines really fruity, drink them young. And, for that matter, if you like the effects of the alcohol in the wine to come through, drink them young. 

A more evolved wine will often have more complexity to it meaning that it may start with the fruit flavors, but they will not overwhelm the more floral, herbaceous, and earth tones. You will get the umami that is evident everywhere on your palate. 

So, how do you know? How do you know if a wine is ageworthy? Frankly, it's hard to know. So, we rely on the experienced palates of critics. Tasting thousands of different wines per year and having observed over the years which age well and which do not, they make reasonable predictions as to the aging pattern of wines. More often than not, they are close, but sometimes they get it as wrong as we could possibly imagine.

Put yourself in Napa Valley about 20 years ago. The 1997 Cabernets had been bottled. Early impressions were remarkable. This was undoubtedly the vintage of the century. Everything was right about these wines. They would drink well over the next 10 years and then really evolve into greatness to rival, for example, the 1947, 1961, and 1982 Bordeaux.

If you drank them young, you might agree. Following a seemingly perfect growing season and harvest, they showed delicious fruit, yet great expressions of the local terroir when still young. They evolved nicely from year to year and promised to be even greater than initially expected.

And, then .. poof.

Yes, poof.

The wines lost their flavor and they lost it quickly. Not all of the wines, but certainly most of them. And, while some wines tighten up and then recover, most of the 1997 Napa Cabernets did not. The fact is that if anybody knows why, they haven't told me.

So, what do we look for when trying to determine if a wine is ageworthy? More than anything else, we look to experience. What happened with similar wines? So, if you think the 2020 Chateau Pepe Le Pew is reminiscent of the 1990 vintage and you know the 1990 vintage aged well, you take a wild guess that the 2020 will age similarly. 

To quote Billy Joel, "You may be right, I may be crazy."

Another way is to know what characteristics of a wine tend to make them more ageworthy. Here are four characteristics to look for. A wine that has all four of them likely does not exist, so in order from maybe least important to most important, here we go.

• Acidity -- wines with higher acidity age longer than those with lesser acidity. These are the wines that are often more difficult to drink young and are often considered less approachable, but they do tend to age.
• Alcohol -- I know this will disappoint many, but alcohol is volatile. When a non-foritifed wine has an alcohol content that is too high, that alcohol tends to react in the wine and turn it to vinegar. Beware of wines with more than 14% ABV. And, note that some of the longest-lived Burgundies have very low alcohol content.
• Tannins -- This should not surprise anyone. Tannins become more present in the wine from skins, pips, and oak barrels. The more of each you get, the more tannic the wine. When young, the tannins make you pucker. But as they age and soften, they become much more approachable and give the wine significant character.
• Sugar -- No wines last longer than Sauternes, Sherry, Port, and Riesling. What do they have in common? Residual sugar. Chemically, the sugar seems to stop the wine from breaking down and make it more ageworthy.

So now that you are the expert, I know who to call to find out whether to age my wines or not.