Not All Wines Age Like Fine Wine: Here's Why
- some bottles won’t improve
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“How old are these wines?” asked the gentleman almost as an afterthought. We were on our way to the wine store till to complete his wine purchase.
I was at a slight loss for words.
Rare.
I enquired why he was asking, to make sure my assumption was correct. He said: “Aren’t old wines better?”
Within his price range the bottles were not of a quality intended to age. But I didn’t want to blurt out: “It doesn’t really matter for these bottles.”
Don’t get me wrong, they were good to very good quality wines – but they will not get better with age. In fact, they will likely get - “less good”.
So there is no point in ageing them. Best to enjoy them soon!
This is a concept that most people do not understand. They think that the longer you keep a wine the better. However, most wines should be consumed within a year or 2 at the most. If NOT packaged in a glass bottle, they are intended to be consumed within 6 months.
What makes a wine age-able?
To improve with age, a wine needs structure and quality. All quality wines will have good structure, but not all structured wines will be wines of quality.
Wine Structure
Wine structure consists of acidity, tannins, alcohol, and in some cases, sugar.
I think of these elements as the foundation or backbone of the wine. Without that structure, the wine will fall apart as it ages. Essentially the structure maintains the wine in parallel to the flavor’s evolution. Remembering that the goal is for the wine to get better!
Acidity and sugar are both items in food (or drink) that help preservation. Consider vinegars or honey, high in acid and sugar respectively, as examples. Neither require refrigeration, demonstrating their ability to preserve well.
Alcohol has been used to preserve wines for centuries. This was how fortified wines like Port, Sherry, and Madeira came to be. The alcohol allowed the wine to keep during a long voyage from Spain or Portugal to Northern Europe, the UK, or beyond.
In general, alcohol, acidity, and sugar levels do not change as a wine ages.
That leaves us with tannins.
Tannins are most relevant in red wines. Tannins play a role in the texture and body of wines, very important factors in wine quality. They influence the ability for a wine to age with very complex chemistry that is not fully understood. Tannins also continue to evolve during the ageing process. From a wine drinker’s perspective, tannins will become softer and more integrated in the wine with age.
Doesn’t that happen in decanting too?
Yup – bottle ageing is like very slow decanting. And decanting is like a rapid micro-ageing process.
Wine Quality
For wine to improve with age, a certain wine quality must exist to begin with. It must be balanced and have enough flavor and aromatic complexity and concentration. With time the wine will become even more balanced, and the flavor complexity will increase.
A high-quality wine will have a balance of acidity, alcohol, and sweetness, and for reds, tannins. Compare it to the five food flavor pillars – salty, sweet, sour, bitter, umami. When in balance, a food dish is seamless - one bite leaves you yearning for the next bite. No one element is significantly dominant. The same goes with wine. With age, acidity, tannins, and alcohol will also become better integrated – meaning all elements become more seamless and more in harmony with one another.
The exception is a wine that is intended to age a very very long time. When young, the wine’s acidity or tannins may appear very high and out of proportion, but these will integrate with time. These are intentional decisions made during the wine making process to give the wine more staying power. They are not intended to be enjoyed young.
Time also plays a role in adding complexity and depth to the flavors and aromas! I compare it to stews, soups, and sauces. They are always better the next day! But you must start with a good to very good soup for it to improve. If there is not much flavor complexity to start with, there is nothing to evolve from.
With wine ageing, flavors evolve into new ones. Fresh fruit flavors may become more like ripe, cooked, or dried fruit flavors. In white wines, flavors such as honey, ginger, and nuttiness may develop, and in reds mushroom, wet leaves, and cigar may become present. All these flavors add to the complexity of the wine, one of the key attributes of a wine that has evolved positively with time.
Lastly, a certain level of flavor and aroma concentration must be present for a wine to age. Since, flavors and aromas will fade with time, if their initial concentration is too low, the wine will have little taste once aged.
Boo.
Consider again the gentleman at the beginning of this article. With age, his wines would become disjointed and unbalanced, with acidity starting to overshadow the other wine characteristics. The simple (not particularly complex) flavors would eventually fade.
Given all that is mentioned above, the most important factor to ageing a wine is proper storage conditions. Even if the planets align, the wine will not age optimally if it is not in a cool place (between 10-15 degrees Celsius) with low light. Ideally there are no dramatic temperature swings.
The featured wine is a 2012 which shows amazing complexity - many layers of various fruit flavors with various levels of “fruitiness“ (ripe and dry), as well as complexities from the oak maturation and ageing notes.
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Bodegas Hermanos Pérez Pascuas Viña Pedrosa Crianza 2012 from Ribera del Duero, Spain
Style: Full Body Red Wine
Varieties: 100% Tempranillo
This rich wine has aromas of violet and flavors of very ripe strawberry, black cherry, dried cherry, dried strawberry, very ripe blackcurrant, ripe blackberry, ripe blueberry, thyme, coconut, rich vanilla, milk chocolate, cedar, dark chocolate, earth, forest floor, game, animal, meat, leather, cigar, and wet leaves. It has a high level of high-quality, chalky tannins and a persistent finish.
Best pairings: Grilled game meats (venison or wild boar), Boeuf bourguignon, Roasted lamb chops, Aged Hard cheeses like Manchego or Aged Gouda.
Serving Temperature: 16-18 degrees Celsius
Serving Tips: Decant for 30 minutes minimum.
Cost: ~$32 Cdn
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SOURCES:
Harding, J. and Robinson, J. (2023) The oxford companion to wine. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
MacNeil, K. (2022) The wine bible. New York, NY: Workman Publishing.
Wine & Spirit Education Trust (2021) D3: Wines of the World - An accompaniment to the WSET Level 4 Diploma in Wines. Version 1.2. London: Wine & Spirit Education Trust.
This is an excellent explanation. We are quite hopeless at cellaring wine!! But if a winery suggests we do we give it a go :)