Having recently tried some aged Riesling, all I can do is add my 2 cents. The aged riesling showed a depth and complexity that I did not know was possible in riesling, and I definitely enjoyed and savored it. But there are aspects of young riesling that I very much enjoy also, that I cannot get get from aged riesling.
I’m not sure any wine benefits from aging as much as German Riesling. To me, the young ones are all nice grape beverages - sweet green grape fruit juice, hopefully acid and a bit of mineral, mostly tasting similar to each other. But at 15-30 years old, they become a wine experience. There is usually still fruit and a bit of sweetness, but now there is a real terroir sensation, real balance and complexity.
The great thing, too, is that good quality $20 90 point Kabinett can give you that kind of experience; you don’t need to have gotten expensive or highly-rated wines in order to have beautiful aging results.
If Kim is interested in discovering whether she likes aged wines, the best thing is to try some. It’s never in history been easier to obtain mature wines, often at reasonable prices (if you aren’t chasing the collector wines but just want a good drinking experience). Better still to follow Wes’s suggestion, and try a wine in a vertical tasting. Take a solid mid-priced Bordeaux like, say, Sociando Mallet, and try several bottles from good (or at least fairly similarly regarded) vintages of different ages, try them all together, and see what is different and what profile you prefer. You could take 2014, 2005, 2000, 1996 and 1990 and try them all in a dinner with a few other wine enthusiasts and some big steaks.
To answer your question in my words…
Very few wines make it to being ‘old’, those that do (never great wines just great bottles) will rock your world and make you understand things that you never thought were possible in wine.
My epiphany was a 55’ cheval blanc, I can’t describe what it was that made me get it but I can tell you it was perfect in every way…
I think ‘old’ wine is more an experience than a definitive, there’s no answer right or wrong, it’s just the aha moment when you see god…
Nathan with all due respect, if that were the case I would never age a wine. The point is to get an improved beverage, not one that had nothing left but some aromas. I want to drink it.
As to the question - would the best aged wines be better than the best young wines, that’s an impossible question to answer. As others have said, and as I’ve said, it depends on what you want and what you like. I get the feeling from reading this board that a good percentage of the people have only had CA wines that they consider aged at ten or fifteen years and don’t know the universe of possibilities. And there are others that have had wines from all over the world and you’re getting different answers from them.
Do as Wes suggested and taste the same wine at different ages. Over the years I’ve done that with hundreds of wines, depending on the wine, going from barrel samples to wines from the 1920’s. You just can’t understand aging unless you do that and figure out at what point you like the wine. At this point I’m comfortable in my preferences for some wines with some age and others on release. And in all cases, it depends on the wine.
But what about those vintages that seemed to be amazing vintages upon release, like 05 bordeaux, but upon aging, have fallen flat? It all seems like a mystery to me.
It is a mystery, and it is to most people, no matter how much certainty they have when they state their opinions.
Mariano Garcia has made some of the most age-worthy red wines from anywhere in the world. He might hazard his opinion on his wines from a particular vintage. How can he know about yours? Then the wine press goes to people like him and asks for an opinion. They aggregate those opinions and offer a rating on the vintage.
Or they look over their points for various wines and offer their vintage rating based on those (after checking with everyone else).
One of the things that helped make Parker’s reputation is that he pronounced the 1982 Bordeaux vintage wonderful after others had panned it. That’s not the way it is today. These days, post Parker, people vie to be the first one to proclaim a vintage, especially if it’s Bordeaux. But they’re not usually tasting blind when they taste barrel samples, nor are they necessarily tasting alone.
Just as importantly, you don’t get quoted if you rate wines low. What retailer wants to advertise that they have a 76 point wine? But when you say it’s the best ever and rate it 100 points, you get quoted by every retailer in the country, regardless of the fact that you don’t know shit about the wine, the wine maker, the grapes, the regions, or the track record of any.
And then there are the local organizations, especially in Europe. They provide the “official” vintage ratings. But look at those. They are usually some variant of good, really good, great, excellent, and spectacular. What organization rates its member wineries as poor or undrinkable?
But none of this means that a wine won’t improve with age.
BTW, I don’t know that the 2005 Bordeaux have fallen flat.
Well, if it wasn’t a mystery, what’s the point? 
Seriously, I hope to never completely understand this stuff - it’s what keeps me going, wondering, grasping.
Cheers.
Wines like 05 Bordeaux (and 05 Burgundy!) which have “fallen flat” will no doubt reemerge from their shell in due time (provided that they´re are ageworthy wines, not overoaked “small” Châteaux, not Bourgogne Passe-Tout-Grains etc.) … all it takes is a certain patience …
If you don´t have the patience either buy aged wines or smaller wines (or vintages) that are fully mature after 8-10 years …
1995 Bordeaux has only just started to drink well in the last few years. While I can’t speak to the plethora of modern styled wines if you own any traditionally styled '05 Bordeaux just give them time.
Babykiller! ![[soap.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/a/a7ea1fffd3ef237e8f19d17a83270ad8452218ca.gif "soap"){kind=small}
lol, I said “just started”
I agree with you Jay and the '95s are a perfect counterexample of the idea that young BDX has “fallen flat” in its youth is in some way defective. I wouldn’t know because I don’t even think about my '05s sitting their in the larval state…you made me think about them…damn…la, la, la… Anyway, 10 years ago, the '95s were sharp and lacked charm. Over the last few years, they’ve shown really well and IMO have justified the sleep. The '05s had so much stuffing that I wouldn’t expect them to really be open for business until 2020 or 2025. I recently had an '05 Haut Bergey from Graves that was really not ready yet, so I’m thinking even the early drinkers have to be laid down for a while.
If you don’t have patience with BDX (or Burgundy) you are going to miss out on a lot of great experiences. That presuppose the space (and relative wealth) necessary to get to that point. In the meantime, I’m really enjoying some of the off the beaten path wines of Italy and saving my shekels for storage fees.
There’s nothing wrong with preferring young wine - or youngish wine [aged only 20ish years] - most people seem to prefer their wine young like that.
But you cellar wines to old age in order to SMELL them.
Here’s a picture, by Mark Scudiery, of Bartolo Mascarello Barolo, from 1955, 1958, 1982, and 1990:
You simply cannot expect a translucent/transparent 60-year-old pinkish-orange wine to have flavors which in any way resemble the flavors of a dark purplish-black barrel sample.
Again, though, if you prefer to drink your wines young, or youngish, then drink them young or youngish.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
+1
First I am all for aging wine and enjoying bottles from many point along there life trajectory. But I think we throw around words like old, aged, mature and great like they are the same and they are not, either subjectively or objectively. A really good bottle of Cotes du Gasconge Blanc that is less then a year old is mature, and on a hot summer Friday after a long week, is pretty great. Is it Latour? No, but at that moment which would you rather have in you glass.
Now for old and aged, I agree that any bottle over about 30 years old is a total crap shoot. There are wines that go on forever (77 Dow I’m not sure will ever be mature) but are very far from common. All good wines have a “peak and plateau” and decline, each wine and bottle for that matter, reaches these stages differently both in terms of how long to reach each point and how long each stage lasts. In my experience only a hand full of 50+ year wines out of hundreds tasted over the last 30+ years have not been well into decline. I think much of the adulation about wines that are well past prime in tasting I have attended can be summed up by something my Grandfather said to me at a birthday party for him in his late 80s. “You know you are old when the only thing people can think to celebrate about you is the fact that you are not dead yet.”
JFWIW - just came from a ´14 Bx tasting and had Haut-Bergey 2014 - a very good wine, I guess it will be drinking well between 2026 and 2034 … or over the next 1-2 years from now …
Thanks, Gerhard! It’s pretty reasonable in the US price-wise. I haven’t bought it yet, but it looks like Wine.com has it for ~$22. I appreciate the recc. ![[worship.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/9/99a8907a1d5b3c023582052741dc72dc9823c044.gif "worship"){kind=small}
That’s what I was thinking. Otherwise, what’s the point in getting older?
P Hickner
There is a skunk in the room that has not been mentioned:
“One reads many glowing reviews of (French) wines that taste great and are 50 years old or more.”
People who either hold wine until it reaches 50, or who spend significant sums on very old wine have a built in motivation to find them wonderful. How many of these “glowing reviews” are of wines that many, if not most educated wine-loving consumers would think were mediocre, too old, or just plain putrid swill?
How many times are there tastings of thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars worth of supposedly great old wines that are simply not beverages that give pleasure? The typical supermarket buyer of Middle Sister would probably declare most if not all such wines as horribly bad beverages, and the typical buyer of twenty dollar Cabernet or Pinot Noir would simply say “Gee, this might have been pretty good when it had some freshness and fruit”.
Last year at my national sales meeting, I opened a range of California Cabernets from the 60s, mostly from the right producers (there weren’t many back then), the right vintages and the right provenance. Most were drinkable but clearly too old. This year I again offered my people California Cabernets, but from 1990, 1991 and 1992. They were good to sensational. There wasn’t one I would hold for anything close to another ten years.
When I read reviews of great old wines, I take them with many grains of salt. Dessert wines always excepted, along with the few I’ve had the privilege to taste with Francois Audouze.
Dan Kravitz
Completely agree with Dan on those super aged wines. Admittedly, as long as that old bottle is delicious, especially during a special occasion, I’d find many reasons to love it. I’d be far more critical towards youthful or mildly aged wines.