What is the point of age?

One reads many glowing reviews of (French) wines that taste great and are 50 years old or more. Also there is much written about the “ageablity” of current releases (including the current trend: low ABV, low pH, high TA). I am trying to understand this - with the caveat that I am a wine maker but not experienced at tasting expensive aged cuvees as many here are.

  1. Old wines that still taste good are fun because they transmit vinyard and winemaking essences over time. Is there more than this?

  2. I like the idea of age retaining beauty, but are very old wines necessarily better than not so old? (Besides high tannin Bordeaux types, which will etch your palate in their early years)

  3. What if someone could make a wine that is better (to most palates) in 3 years than famous ones at 40 years (tasted blind)? Would it still be cheaper in the face of the gravitas of ageing?

  4. Do aged wines in one’s cellar confer status? If so, does this factor into price, above and beyond taste and aromatics?

Thanks in advance

Kim

Go ahead and try a 50 year old bottle of wine.

Taking each of your questions in turn, and of course with the caveat that not all old wine is good wine…

  1. Yes, and yes.
  2. Not necessarily, though you’ve already noted some wines (like very tannic ones) require age to become more enjoyable. Once a wine is “mature” it becomes personal preference whether more age makes it even more enjoyable.
  3. “to most palates” says it all: this is a forum for not so much most palates. There are likely to always be enthusiasts who prefer aged wine over young wine.
  4. No, unless you’re doing it wrong and your main reason for wine is to make up for insecurities. Clearly, status and age factor into price, as with all rare luxury goods

Overall, I would say very old wine is not simply “better” than mature / not quite so old wine. It’s different. For many wine enthusiasts, that difference is delightful and hence they go to the effort.

“Old” can connote many things: wisdom, wealth, experience, crankiness, obstinate, tough, fortitude, evolving, standing hard and fast, unyielding. Wines, like people, can exhibit the same characteristics and range. Personally, I the the tannins and oak and whatever else was added to the wine to integrate and become “whole”. For me, it’s like watching the neighbors’ kids (or your own) growing up and seeing how rough they are grow up and blossom into adults. I like this stage, before the adults turn into salesmen or con-artists or politicians. You want the potential to be there and realized, but before the life of the world grinds them down and turns them into shells of what they once were.

Some of us just want to drink and be pleasurably intoxicated. Some of us want to think while we are drinking…

And typical Berserkers want to do both at different times. I think you appreciate aged wine more the older you get. Kind of like people.

I don’t really like the term old, just integrated. It usually doesn’t take 50 years to integrate a bottle in almost every case. And my wife really hates the taste of very old wines so generally not keeping them that long.

Aged, high quality wines consistently develop a level of complexity and integration that young wines rarely possess. I would say in the cases of red and sweet wines, young examples never have those characteristics to the extent that good aged ones do. The aged wines are thus of higher quality. Most wine drinkers prefer young wines, but for those of us who appreciate the character that development brings, there is no substitute.

As usual, though, YMMV - I do not personally believe the concept that ‘aged wines are thus of higher quality’. I’ve asked the same thing in the past and I do believe many feel that a wine cannot be ‘great’ without having ‘aging potential’. And I’ve always wondered about this.

I guess it comes down to your definition of ‘great’ or ‘better’. I’ve had plenty of younger wines that offered up so much enjoyment that I would classify them myself as ‘great’, whether or not they would be ‘better’ in a decade or two.

Cheers.

Larry, I edited my post to take it even a step further. Do you really think a young wine can have as much complexity as a mature wine? I don’t. Also, can you name a truly great wine that doesn’t have the potential to develop with age in a positive fashion? I don’t believe there is such a wine.

I think each of your questions deserves it’s own thread! I find that aged wines have greater delineation, as well as the complexity. I like 'em. To each his own and, if you don’t like truffle in your wine, more power to you. I’m just not sure that anyone has ever called a younger wine ethereal, if that’s the experience you are going for. As Dennis said, people here at Wine Berzerkers tend to like different things at different times. I love older wines, but I’m not looking for ethereal with a $20 bottle of Dolcetto/Barbera blend on a Monday night with a simple pasta.

Matt Kramer wrote a good piece in WS about what makes a great wine. It’s pretty well written and covers some of these points. Not earth shattering, but worth a read.

Very shortly said:
the point of an aged (mature) wine is the developement of additional tertiaer aromas and tastes - something not yet present in younger wines … and which is “more” interesting than the primary fruit (incl. structure) and (possibly) winemaking influences (oak etc.)

At the same time the wine reaches (hopefully) a balance between all his major elements (fruit, structure, acidity, oak etc.) which usually also isn´t there at youth …

All this applies to wines that are capable of aging gracefully … which is a low (< 5%) percentage of all wines produced worldwide.

IMHO the reason for aging a wine is not (only) to “soften” tannins and make the wine “drinkable” or accessable … in many instances one is missing the most interesting stages of developement when only longing for “drinkablity” …

Personally: a wine can objectively be over its apogee (its perfect balance) - and still be interesting, even more interesting than before … but it´s no general rule … and “simple wines” won´t develope anything very interesting no matter how long you age them …

BTW: read this: 1985 Mongeard-Mugneret Grands Echezeaux - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers

Great question, Doug - and one that is not that easy to answer. ‘Complexity’ is a term that can mean different things to different people. I understand your point and generally agree with you - having ‘older wines’ can be a completely different experience if these wines develop secondary or tertiary elements that would not be present when the wine is young. But this comes as a trade off at times - fruit and other elements will subside as some of these other attributes become more front and center.

I see notes on here all of the time of wines drinking beautifully young but folks being ‘disappointed’ 'when opening aged bottles of these wines. Did the not provide a great experience originally? And is the excitement always in ‘what will come’ rather than what the wine is displaying at that time?

Can you not have a Rose that is complex when young but does not stand the test of time?

Just another viewpoint here . . .

I want to blurt out, “Aromatics,” but some of the chemists on the board might prefer that we call them “Aromas”.

Anway, for laymen: Aromatics.

I think the ability to age and become “better” is built into the prices of most such wines. So, to me, whether they are “better” or not with “age”, it is a shame not to get what you’ve paid for-- and the winemaker has put “into” the bottle.

The entire point of aging a wine is so that it improves. If it doesn’t, then there’s no reason to age it. Aromatics are to me the least important issue, and softening tannins aren’t the reason for the wines I age. But you do get an entirely different wine than you do when it’s young, exactly as Gerhard stated.

With a young wine, you get mostly the young fruit, the fermentation, and the wood, if any. That can all be very wonderful. With an aged wine, you get something entirely different. Open a Rioja from the 1960s and there’s no other wine that’s going to be quite like it. It’s just not possible to develop that character while the wine is young because what gives it the characteristic aroma and taste is the development of new compounds and the breakdown of old ones that can only occur over time.

As to whether that’s better or not, it all depends on the individual. If people want to spend $350 for a bottle of wine that’s not going to go anywhere other than where it is now, that’s up to them. If they like it today and have the cash, then OK. And for them it may be great. They aren’t “wrong”. Can a wine be “great” without being aged? Sure - there’s no objective definition of “great”. But if your wine doesn’t become better, then there’s no reason at all to age it.

As a strong proponent of the idea that if a winemaker can make a great wine that is drinkable in three years, it’s silly to make a wine that takes 30 years to taste great, let me argue the other side. I have had a few phenomenal older wines. The ones that immediately come to mind are a 1976 Chateau de la Maltroye Chassagne Montrachet Rouge that I bought on release and drank in about 2006; a 1962 Delas Hermitage La Tourette that I drank at Berns about 5 years ago; and a 1970 Monfortino that was bought on release by a client of mine and he gave it to me as a thank you gift. Each of these wines had a very special characteristic that I admit I do not get in recent vintage wines. I would describe that characteristic as a clarity of flavor as the clutter disappears over the years, leaving a purity and, in some cases simplicity, of flavor. All the negative flavors melt away and there is a sharpness, not in acidity, but in clarity and purity.

The problem, of course, is that it doesn’t happen all that often. I had a 1971 Grivelet Clos Vougeot and a 1972 Drouhin Corton last weekend. The Grivelet was DOA and the Drouhin was good, but far from great. When they are on, the older wines can be quite good, but I have doubts about the risk/reward. Even with great provenance, ijn my experience there are a lot more failures and “Just OK” wines than great wines. YMMV.

And then you have older dessert wines, which are another story entirely. they are much less likely to die and take on a lot of extra complexity.

Not chemists but people who can speak English. An aromatic is something that emits and odor. An aroma is what it emits.

Like I was saying, for laymen, it’s the aromatics.

Thanks for your good thoughts on this.

Maybe a different way to assess this question?

If tasted blind (not knowing vintages, etc), would the best aged wines that age well be better than the best young wines?

Good topic here. For me personally it’s not the oak, but I prefer resolved tannins.
Is there such a thing as being “young tannin” averse? Like tca, some can stand more than others.