I think it’s a decent indicator most of the time, though its value as an indicator depends a lot on the types of wines with which you are doing it. I’m not so surprised that Alan, who mostly drinks Burgundy, might find this not to be a useful indicator, as I don’t know that those work so well in this way. Others who drink more cabs, Bordeaux, California wines, Italian wines, might be more likely to reach the other conclusion.
As you can see from this thread, wine after day one is highly dependent on the taster, on the methods of preserving, and the wines in question. So you’re never going to get a strong consensus on this, you kind of have to experiment and find your own way.
Focusing on outlier sensitivity to minor levels of oxidation kind of misses the point of the question, doesn’t it? It’s about looking for indicators of ageability, if there’s a correlation, not >>>SQUIRREL!!!<<<
I can cite low acid tannic wines that fell apart within a day and also couldn’t age for shit. That’s a correlation. If you like wines like that - fun to drink young, but need to be consumed in the first sitting - it’s probably not a good idea to buy them to age.
Having just sampled some leftover Barolos in the refrigerator from a tasting six days ago, I think it tells you a lot. The Brovia Brea – a top wine on day 1 – was even better tonight. One lighter wine, Frat. Alessandria Monvigliero, held up but had lost a bit. I’ll lay my bets on that Brovia for aging.
Having hosted tasting groups for 20 years and sampling the leftovers, I’m convinced that with wines that have serious structure, the second day (and sometimes day 3 and 4) can tell you a lot about the balance of a wine, its stability and what was lurking there that didn’t show itself on day 1. Sometimes a lot of fruit emerges from a tough, backward wine after a day or two and you can catch a glimpse of how it may come together with time.
Tasting a day or two later will also reveal VA and other less pleasant things.
I think Clark Smith would be in a great position to give a super detailed answer. He knows this stuff backward and forward.
What I’ve gleaned from him, though, is that it will tell you more about the wine’s ability to take up oxygen and improve while doing so, rather than whether it will age gracefully in bottle. If the wine can take up that much oxygen and still be in good shape it means that it likely has the stuffing to age well. If not, well, then you have to start guessing about things like oxygen ingress rates through the closure and all that jazz. Obviously that’s a whole lot of guesswork. It’s also important to remember that the antioxidant properties of wine tend to protect it from (generally harmful) oxygen while the non-oxidative aging processes do their thing over time.
The long and short of it, then, is that if it’s as good or better after a day or two open with some time to take up oxygen that bodes well for longer term aging potential. If not, well, then it’s not much of a signal if the closure doesn’t allow a whole lot of oxygen into the wine in the first place.
First, Emily has been a member since 2010 and has less than 200 posts? Post more often!
Second, the question was whether a few days of being open can work as a proxy for ability to age.
Too many variables to answer that. There are many wines that may not totally fall apart after being open a few days but that will definitely not be wonderful to drink. And yet those very same wines can be magnificent with twenty or thirty years. I’m thinking of countless red wines from Rioja or Ribera del Duero - I use them for cooking if they’re open more than a day. Red wines from Bordeaux and Barolo have different aging curves, and most white wines are different yet again.
I’m OK with opening a crisp white and not finishing the bottle. That can be something like Muscadet, Albarino, Chablis, Arneis, or the wines that I’ve been drinking recently from Sicily and Greece. Those are often really good on day three. I don’t know that I want to age them however. And since I haven’t, I can’t speak to how well they’d do, but I think that there is little correlation.
Same with a lot of Riesling. Aging it turns it into a completely different beast. With those wines, a day or two or three in the fridge is not any kind of proxy IMHO.
I do not base my cellaring decisions on how a wine tastes on day two. IMHO winery track record, vintage track record, and overall tasting impressions of the wine based on fruit and acid balance are more worthy indicators.
In the case of Alfert I am sure that day two makes those weedy green wines taste less bad.
This is much how I feel. I have very seldom found red wines, even young, tannic wines, to be better on day two. I typically find them tired and with off-putting oxidized flavors. Whites frequently hold up well for a night, if they are acidic and bright to begin with, and might show some improvement by way of oak integration. German Riesling seems to hold up well for a couple of days before I notice degradation.
Are you talking about wines left out at room temperature or refrigerated? That makes all the difference.
At room temperature, I agree that the wine is almost always worse the next day in my experience. It’s an entirely different story if you refrigerate them. Refrigerated I very often find more fruit relative to the tannin and acid and generally no oxidation.
Emily Richer wrote:
My wines (Franc/Merlot blends) are all (save the 2012) built to age.
Hi, Emily. Thank you for posting! Your perspective is greatly appreciated. This comment caught my attention. Is this statement about your 2012 specific to your wine or do you think it is more characteristic of the vintage in general?
John I’ve tried it all. The best results were from when my wife was expecting and I knew I’d only want half a bottle or less, so I’d immediately pour half into a 375 and replace cork, then place in fridge. Even so, I typically liked the wine a lot less the next day (if I returned to it the next day) than when fresh. I wish it weren’t the case, but it typically is. Perhaps there’s a confirmation bias going on, where I believe that the wine won’t be as good so I find it to be so. Whatever the reason, that is unfortunately how it works for me. I’m not quite as extreme as Anton’s position, there have been more times for me where a wine has improved or held steady until day two, it just isn’t a frequent occurrence for me.
Some wines that I have left in the fridge for a few nights that have turned out beautifully on Day 2-3:
Pradikat riesling from the Mosel and Rheingau
young Chablis
more geeky/oxidative white Rioja (like LdH - where it’s almost like Madeira - can’t kill it because it’s already dead)
young Cab, specifically some 2011-2012 Bdx (both left and right bank) and some 2013 California cabs that I sacrificed for science
Dirty and Rowdy SVD mourvedre
Just off the top of my head. Most of these wines I would have said were “not ready” on day 1 and recorked with most of the bottle left and minimal air. I’m sure the degree of oxidation allowed makes a difference.
Still wondering how good a proxy this is for slow bottle aging.
In my experience, it almost always breaks down as:
A) People who prefer Parkerized wines uniformly despise Day 2 [and it seems like Day 2 never really arrives for most of them, because they guzzle the entire bottle on Day 1].
B) People who prefer AFWE wines are much more fascinated with the evolution of the wine on Day 2.
Having glanced at the Virage website [a Napa Valley Dry Rose?!?], it doesn’t surprise me at all that Emily Richer would be studying Day 2 evolution so intently.
What kinds of wine are you drinking? I find improvement is less common with grenache (which is prone to oxidation) and with a lot of New World wines (which tend to show their fruit more readily on pop-and-pour basis and are often lower in acid than the Old World wines I drink most often).
I find it very surprising that other people say they never or almost never experience this, but many of the posts do not say what kind of wines are involved or whether they were refrigerated.
As I said above, my view is based on 20 years of drinking refrigerated leftovers from tastings I’ve hosted, mostly of French and Italian wines. It’s young wines that have a lot of tannin and acid where this most often happens, I find. And very often the ones that improve most are the wines that have the best reputation for aging. For example:
In our tasting of 2012 Barolos last week, the two Serralungas (Schiavenza and Brovia) not only were very stable; they actually came into better balance after the first day, and the Brovia was wonderful on day 6. That makes sense since the soils of Serralunga tend to produce the most concentrated, backward Barolos. By contrast, the much lighter Frat. Alessandria Monvigliero was sound and nice on day 6 but wasn’t as good as day 1 or 2 and the Vajra Albe, the cheapest wine in the tasting, was sound but had not improved on day 2 or day 6. Nor had the Bruna Grimaldi Ambrogia, a producer and vineyard with a weaker reputation than most of the rest of the wines.
In a tasting of current release Northern Rhones a year or so ago, the Clape Cornas showed much better after a day or two. I find that Northern Rhone syrahs often change a lot, for the better, after a day or two.
Leoville Barton often comes into its own after a day or two in the refrigerator. Again, a wine that is known for aging well.
Not coincidently, these are all wines that are usually best with substantial decanting time.
I won’t tell you that day 2 tasting is a perfect predictor of aging potential, but I find it extremely valuable because:
(a) Some wines that were tight as nails on day 1 show fruit and balance that I think gives me an insight into what they will become down the road.
(b) Some wines don’t hold up even when refrigerated – they oxidize or develop VA overnight or just seem out of balance in some way.
I was going to say that German riesling can improve. And had a similar experience 10 years ago with a half bottle of '98 Donnhoff dry Grauburgunder that I had poured off from a 750. It got buried at the back of the refrigerator. The first half of the bottle was kind of boring but the back half six months later – which I feared would be DOA – was fabulous.
This. I used to think day 2 was generally a good indicator, but the more I think about it, the less I think so. I’ve seen tons of wines that I’m pretty sure won’t develop in any positive way show great on the second day. I’ve also seen some, especially Sangiovese and Tempranillo, that I am pretty sure will age great, show very poorly on the second day. The fact that some ageworthy young wines are extremely resistant to oxidation doesn’t mean it’s a general rule, and certainly doesn’t mean that any sort of converse would be true.
Yeah, that distinction isn’t of much use for me, as I drink almost no “Parkerized” wines. In order of consumption in the past year, based upon CT reds by region, it looks like this:
Burgundy (though only because CT includes Beaujolais in that breakdown)
Rhone (mostly N. Rhone)
Oregon
Sicily
Loire
Tuscany (Chianti mainly)
I get John’s point that young, tannic, N. Rhone syrah and Piedmont Nebbiolo are amongst those wines most likely to benefit the most from some additional time. I suppose that I try not to drink them so young that they need that extra day. Perhaps if I was more often opening young wines in these categories I’d have different results.
Your post made me realize that I should clarify what I’ve said.
Some wines that improve on day 2 don’t have a long-term future. I can think of barberas, dolcettos, St. Josephs and gamays that really opened up overnight in the fridge, but which I would not cellar.
That’s a different category from Barolo, Bordeaux, etc., where I think it’s a good long-term omen if the wine comes together on day 2.
I have found this to be very useful for assessing the oxygen appetite/resistance of young wines for a couple decades+. Especially for my own wines, I find this a very, very good way to predict relative longevity FWIW.
‘Relative’ is the key word here. Right now, I happen to have a glass of rose on the counter for 5 days with a watch glass covering it. It is gorgeous. That doesn’t mean it will age as well as a Cabernet Sauvignon beside it that is also showing well. But two roses or two Cabs abused similarly will reveal their relative sturdiness within their construct…to me, at least.
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