Wine is bottled poetry. It’s alive and continually evolving. It can differ from sip to sip, bottle to bottle, vintage to vintage. But what makes a good wine last and even improve over the years? How do you store it properly? And why wait so long to drink a bottle of wine in the first place? I thought I’d investigate the older vintages and answer some of these questions for you.
It is said that 95% (or thereabout) of wine in consumed within 24 hours of its being purchased. Which leads me to believe that most people have not had the extreme pleasure of drinking a wine that has had time to mature in the bottle, a bottle aged wine.
Aging wine has been around for millenniums with the earliest evidence of stored wine having been found in 7,000 year-old pottery jugs that were buried in the dirt floor of a Neolithic kitchen in Iran. The Romans used their catacombs as make-shift cellars, whilst the French began the practice of digging wine caves designed specially to store their adored potion. Eventually, wine collectors turned from catacombs to caves, and from caves to the cellars we know today.
A mature wine can be simply magical—offering nuances and textures unimaginable in a young wine. Such perfection may take decades to achieve, as the wine slumbers in a cool, dark place, awaiting the moment for which all great wines are born: to be enjoyed by someone who will appreciate all that it has to say.
Time in the bottle can change a wine’s colour, aromas, flavours and texture in pretty amazing ways, making it far more complex, elegant and desirable than when it was first bottled.
The first change you’ll see when you examine an aged wine is its colour. As red wines age, their colour changes from ruby/purple to dark ruby, to medium ruby, to ruby with an amber edge, to ruby with a brown edge. This is because as wine ages in the bottle, oxygen passes through the cork since cork is a porous material (this only happens with natural corks, not synthetic corks or screw caps). This exposure to oxygen causes wine to turn brown, just like a cut apple will turn brown when left out on a counter.
From “The Billionaire’s Vinegar”: “Crudely, the molecular changes known to unfold in a sealed wine bottle that has been laid down for years involve the gradual interaction of oxygen and wine. Simple chemical compounds break down and recombine into more and more complex forms called polymeric phenols. Acidity and alcohol soften. The largest compounds – the harsh, astringent tannins – drift down into a carpet of sediment, taking with them the saturated, inky pigments. They leave behind a mellowed, unfathomably subtle flavour and a brick-red hue. Everything knits together, resolving into an ever finer complexity expressed fragrantly in the wine’s bouquet.”
The writer also points out that “a wine is considered mature when it has maximized its flavour possibilities but has not yet begun to deteriorate”. Many wines these days are just not made to last.
Drinking an aged wine is, without a doubt, an acquired taste, as most of us are used to drinking wine in its youth. But, if you’re feeling adventurous, old wine can’t hurt you. It doesn’t turn toxic or unhealthy with age. But if you’re planning to try your old wine for a special occasion, it’s wise to have a “backup” bottle around to pinch-hit if needed.
Try new things, and on occasion, try some old ones too.
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