Wine ageing

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Bird on a Fire
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Wine ageing

Post by Bird on a Fire » Mon Jul 05, 2021 9:15 pm

I've only really got "into" wine in the last couple of years - one of my lockdown hobbies ;)

I'm now really quite familiar with the major regions, styles and varietals of Portugal, but very little else. I've also been focusing my attention on younger wines, partly for simple economic reasons but also because I'm aware that ageing would alter what I'm looking for.

But as at happens I have a few bottles over 15 years old (table wines, not port). What should I be looking for, phenomenologically? My general impression is that tannins, which can be really quite something, especially in the from the south, get increasingly attenuated, plus some "oxidative" flavours and of course the wood itself.

I have a few books, but I'm interested in other folks' perspectives.
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Woodchopper
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Re: Wine ageing

Post by Woodchopper » Tue Jul 06, 2021 7:50 am

Not wine but ...

I like making jam. I find that it ages like wine. Over a year or two bitter flavours mellow, I assume its the tannins attenuating.

IvanV
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Re: Wine ageing

Post by IvanV » Tue Jul 06, 2021 11:02 am

This can only be a brief introduction.

Only "better" wines are designed for longer aging these days. Although it is possible you still have that old-fashioned phenomenon in Portugal of small wine-makers making wine as they always did, which is by chance of the right form and structure for longer aging. When it comes to cheap wines, they often only get worse when they begin to lose the young fresh aromas. But some, more structured, can benefit from short-term aging of a couple of years, maybe up to high single digits. Clearly there are not strict divisions. The ones that can last, indeed can often need, double digit aging, tend to be deliberately made as such, and sold at distinctly higher prices.

The kind of Douro wines I pay around £10 in an English supermarket often benefit from 2 or 3 years aging, but they are not for long term aging. But I also have some better wines from Ferreirinha, their upper-medium Callabriga and their very high quality Quinta da Leda. They are both from 2014 as it happens. The Callabriga is drinking well now but will last a while. The QdLeda I won't even think about opening until past 2025. Of course Ferreirinha's most prestigious wine is Barca Velha, but that's beyond my budget and is the kind for opening past 15 years. It is only made in good years.

So what's going on? First the short term agers, where a couple of years might help, like those £10 Douros. So when they are young, they are a bit angular with their tannins and acids, and it helps just to soften out a bit. They have plenty of primary fruit flavours, so losing those very early young fresh flavours that are only around for the first year is not a great loss. And there can be a bit of development of their secondary flavours which come from fermentation.

So what's going on with ones we keep a bit longer, like the Callabriga? When the wine is young, it has "primary flavours" that come directly from the grape, and secondary flavours from fermentation. As the wine ages, those primary flavours reduce, and secondary flavours develop a bit and come out. Secondary flavours develop during fermentation, but can sometimes be a bit locked in, and take a while to come out. Finally there are tertiary flavours, which come from longer chemical development of the various components in the bottle. Suggest using google to investigate these a bit.

Often there is a dumb period, when the primary flavours have fallen away, and the secondary flavours are not sufficiently released yet, and the tertiary flavours are yet to develop very much. Some wines for longer aging have a very tough structure, to preserve it, so we need to wait for that toughness to reduce to let he wine be enjoyable to drink. These two phenomena can be confusing. So there are wines which lose their toughness, but are still dumb. Others begin to open out, but are still tough. So in each of these cases we need to wait a bit longer.

There are plenty of posh wines from the Douro made for long aging. The trouble is that there tends to be a big gap between the €10 medium quality wines and the €30+ posh wines. In Bordeaux, there are plenty of €20 which are often close close peers of the €30-€60 wines. So I don't have very much posh Douro in comparison to the quantities of posh Bordeaux, Rhone, Tuscan, Rioja I have. Because there is that large gap. I think you will locally find decent wines from more southerly parts of Portugal that bridge that gap, but we don't see them so much in Britain. I have some £15 wines from FitaPreta in Alentejo, but those are deliberately made for fairly early drinking.

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Re: Wine ageing

Post by IvanV » Tue Jul 06, 2021 12:12 pm

So to be clear, what am I looking for in an aged wine?

First, I want it to have got past any dumbness, to be showing a full range and complexity of aromas, and a long aftertaste. That is the most important thing. It's very hard to predict how long it will take. I've sometimes ended up drinking most of it thinking surely it must be OK now.

Second, I want it to be friendly, not too tough, not too much tannins and acidity. If it is a bit structured, it can be fine with food. But too structured and it's a bit hard to drink.

I also don't want it to have developed "off" flavours. I don't want it to be maderised (unless it is Madeira or an oloroso sherry which is deliberately maderised) - which means the fruit is oxidised away into a disconcerting sherry-type flavour. I don't want it to have too much ethyl acetate - all older wines have a bit of ethyl acetate, but too much is not very nice. I don't want it to have dried up and lost its flavour. Or become dull.

Aging wine is very hit and miss. There is a saying, there is no such thing as good old wines, only good old bottles.

I once bought some high quality wine which "needed" 25 years. A lot of the bottles were out of condition, and it didn't give me that much pleasure. So mostly these days I buy wines which are likely to be at peak at or before 15 years. Main exception, among reds, is some posh Riojas which are not even sold until they are about 12 years old. Sweet wines last much better. I have several bottles of sweet wines from the 1985-1990 still, and they are wonderful.

And don't forget to decant wines that are younger, if they are of the kind that develop with age. And that includes whites. Most bottles of wine I tip into a jug, clean out the bottle, drain the bottle, and pour back into the bottle with a funnel, and then leave a few hours before drinking. Though very old bottles you can lose the aroma doing that, many that are younger or at peak it really helps them come out. For really tough wines, like nebbiolo from NW Italy, it isn't foolish to do it the day before. And remember that red wine doesn't like to be drunk too warm. 16-18C is about right. If its 25 C and it warms up to ambient temperature, it goes out of balance. I keep open red wine in the fridge, and bring it out an hour or so before drinking.

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