Aging Domestic Pinot Noir: Better or just different?

From a recent Pinotfile newsletter


“The truth of wine aging is that it is unknown, unstudied, poorly understood, and poorly predicted.”
Winemaker Zelma Long


One of the wine enthusiasts I know is prone to say about wine, “It’s not ready to drink. It’s a baby, a Lolita.” Sometimes I wonder if he ever enjoys a bottle of wine, since he drinks with guilt, always thinking the wine might be even better with more age.
Judgments about when a wine will reach its peak are very speculative. No one can predict a wine’s apogee with accuracy. UC Davis chemist Sue Ebeler (Wines & Vines, August 2008) pointed out that one can forecast how long a wine will live, but it is impossible to tell what it will taste and smell like. For me, I don’t want to be encumbered with worrisome thoughts about how long to cellar a wine. I just pop the cork when I feel like drinking a wine.
The golden rule of cellaring wine is never to let wine slip past its prime. When a wine is over the hill, it will never come back to life. When you discover a wine at its peak, pull the cork on every bottle you own and party.
Most American Pinot Noir is ready to drink upon release, and although the wines can improve after a few years in bottle, they are usually not made for long-term aging. Noted wine writer and teacher, Kevin Zraly, wrote in the latest (2014) edition of Windows on the World Complete Wine Course, “It’s a common misconception that all wines improve with age. In fact, more than 90% of all top wines made in the world should be consumed within a year, and less than 1% of the world’s wines should be aged for more than 5 years.”
The French Wine Explorers Wine e-Newsletter article by sommelier Lauriann Greene-Solin addressed “The 20% Rule”: “Only 20% of wines have aging potential past one or two years. Why? Because they were not created with aging in mind. The winemaking techniques used for these wines favor fruitiness and freshness, not extraction of the dry matter and tannins needed for a wine to age well. They may also lack the quality to stand up to aging. Only quality wines evolve into something more interesting than they were in their youth.”
When I looked at what several noted wine writers had to say about aging wine (and limited comments on Pinot Noir specifically), including Tim Patterson (Wines & Vines), Kevin Zraly (Windows on the World Complete Wine Course), Jamie Goode (The Science of Wine), and Emile Peynaud (The Taste of Wine), and sommelier Lauriann Greene-Solin, the consensus indicated the following factors were most critical for wine longevity.

  1. Polyphenols, including various tannins and anthocyanins (pigments), act as a natural preservative giving wine the potential for a long life and account for the transformation of wine over time. These chemical components neutralize oxygen and keep oxygen from causing the degradation of everything else in wine. As the tannins evolve and diminish over time, the oxidative process eventually causes browning of color, and tertiary aromas and flavors such as dried fruit, vegetal and nutty characters. The longer a wine is in contact with the skins before, during and after fermentation, the more tannin there will be in the finished wine. Aging in oak barrels also contributes more preservative tannins. Pinot Noir has less tannin and usually will not age as well as say Cabernet Sauvignon, which has more tannin.
  2. Acidity (low pH and high acidity) is more crucial for white wines than red wines because whites lack red wines’ polyphenols.
  3. Balance. This is also a crucial factor in longevity. Balance represents a subjective perception of harmony between all of a wine’s components that produce aromas, flavors and textural characteristics of taste, including acid, sugar, alcohol, tannin, fruit extract and oak, with no one element dominant.
  4. Whole Cluster fermentation contributes tannins. Ted Lemon points out that adding some percentage of whole cluster adds aromatic freshness to older Pinot Noirs. “A Pinot Noir that is ten years old and has a percentage of whole cluster will be more aromatically complex than the same wine 100% de-stemmed.”
  5. Quality. “A wine cellar is not a wine hospital - bad wines don’t get magically better with age, they just get older.” (Dr. Vinny, Wine Spectator, 1/31-2/28, 2015) Not all quality wines are meant to be aged.
  6. Appellation or Typicity of Wine. Some appellations have more aging potential than others. Red Burgundies, for example, can be aged a long time.
  7. Cellar Conditions. None of the criteria mentioned above have any relevance if the wine is not cellared under ideal conditions. Most desirable is a constant temperature (50 to 59ºF), absence of vibration and light, and high humidity. Heat for any prolonged period should be avoided as it accelerates premature aging of wine. A study at the American Chemical Society’s 2014 National Meeting in San Francisco found that Sangiovese wine stored in conditions mimicking those of an Italian apartment without air conditioning (68º to 80ºF had aged four times as fast as the same wine stored at 59º to 62ºF. Other research shows that gradual variations in temperature are not as important as the total number of heat units that accumulate over time.
  8. Persistence. Sommelier Lauriann Greene-Solin claims that if you count the number of seconds a wine’s aromas last on your palate once you spit or swallow the wine can reveal the longevity of the wine. “If it lasts longer than 6 seconds, the aging potential is good. More than 8 seconds, and the wine will likely last a number of years in your cellar.
  9. High Alcohol. High alcohol may not impair aging if it is in balance with other components of wine since it acts as an additional preservative. Sugar is also a preservative but this discussion centers on dry wines only.
  10. Size of Bottle. Wine matures more slowly in magnums (1.5 liter bottles) and lasts longer.
  11. Vintage. Some vintages provide better fruit, acid and tannin balance making the wines more age worthy.
    The crux of the aging issue and specifically the aging of American Pinot Noir is that cellaring the wines only makes sense if you like the effects of aging on Pinot Noir. Pinot Noirs that have been cellared are definitely different, but whether they are better depends on the opinion of the drinker. Older Pinot Noir is often an acquired taste that comes from experience. The winery marketing machine often encourages buyers to cellar wines, but few consumers do, so they don’t know what great aged Pinot Noir really tastes like, and whether it will turn out to suit their taste.
    UC Davis chemist, Sue Ebeler, has been quoted as saying, “It is very difficult to predict the future sensory profile from today’s chemical composition.” In other words, as wine writer Tim Patterson has noted, “One can prophesy how long a wine will live, but you can’t tell what the wine will taste or smell like.”
    Over time, Pinot Noir tends to have softer tannins and tertiary characters develop. The fruit is less fresh and more dried in character, vegetal aromas (mushroom) often develop, and floral, earthy and undergrowth characters may dominate. Poorly balanced Pinot Noirs may show exaggeration of elements that were not harmonious on release such as oak and alcohol as the fruit fades. Flaws in wine may be exaggerated over time. My personal preference is for young wines that benefit from a year in bottle since this is often the time needed for the wine to recover it’s personality that was present in barrel.
    My experience has been that the overwhelming number of American Pinot Noirs will hold their freshness and age nicely over 2 to 5 years, often with subtle improvement, but beyond this time, although a wine may hold on, it is rare to find one that continues to benefit from further aging.

Cheers,
Blake

All well and good, but for the most part we as a community focus on 20% (or less) of the 20% that are meant to age.

I just received an email from one who I sent this to stating:

"My simple axiom…

Good wines improves with age
Mediocre wines stays the same
Bad wines gets worse

And the corollary…

Some wines should be served at room temperature
Some wines should be chilled
Some should be frozen until a cure can be found for them"

Winemaker Zelma Long got it right.

What is “domestic” Pinot Noir anyway? Pinot Noir made in the USA? Until every inch of the US is planted with Pinot Noir, how will anyone every be able to make a statement about it? And there’s nothing particularly special about Pinot Noir - some wines improve with age, some don’t. Until it’s better understood, there’s not much to say about domestic vs imported PN.

Zraly is not my go-to guy for information about wine, but he has a point in this case. However, remember that when you’re talking about the 90+ pct of wines that are not meant to be aged, you’re talking about those gallon jugs and boxes at WalMart, and all the cheap bottom-shelf and Trader Joe’s stuff you can imagine. But that’s misleading. It’s like talking about beef and MacDonald’s in the same sentence. MacDonald’s serves some type of beef-derived substance. Then there’s Flannery’s rib cap. Both are called beef.

Good points. Since this is written by Rusty Gaffney, The Prince of Pinot, and he reviews mostly CA and OR Pinot Noir, I can assume that he is referencing those areas with the term “domestic”. That would definitely include all of the jug wines and skew the curve as you say.

For me, the % rule is a lot different in that I`m drinking a lot of older ABC and Burt Williams wines that were made to be age worthy and have proven to be so since the early 90s. Before that, it was Hanzell, Mount Eden, Calera and a few others.

Point 1: Pinot tends to be low in tannin. Point 2: Good acidity helps aging. Hmmm…

There are plenty of domestic Pinots that age well - and some of them need age. Those are the ones I’m attracted to. Who cares about the ones that don’t?

Aging, to me, simply demonstrates a change in a wine’s flavor profile over time.

Not very controversial. [cheers.gif]

If any given wino prefers a flavor profile that is found with older wines, also not controversial.

I do find statements about wine “aging more rapidly” when stored at higher temperature to be amusing. If this were an accurate assessment, we would have plenty of winos storing our wines at 80° and then enjoying a properly aged flavor profile years in advance of what we sit and wait for!

Storing a wine at too high of a temperature accelerates the degradation of the wine, not it’s aging. Big difference!

Can’t say this is groundbreaking or that controversial. I buy my domestic pinot (CA) with the intention of drinking it between 3-10 years out. I think 10 years is starting to push it, but 3-7 years is a sweet spot.

Ageability is great, but IMO, i like seeing the immediate benefits of cellar aging after about 3 years. I’d also call it a benefit that I can drink it on release!

Ageability is one of the funnier subjects in wine to me. I like to drink wine, not stare at my cellar!

So, then, what do you do for those 3-7 years?

neener

I’ve come to the conclusion that wine is so much more than what’s ‘inside the bottle’, especially for ‘special’ bottles.

It’s one thing to taste wines ‘blind’ and ‘assess’ them and another to simply open a bottle to enjoy.

Older wines are simply ‘different beasts’. How can one determine if they ‘improve or not’ objectively? One cannot. This is true of any specific ratings system, right - it’s all subjective.

I’ve seen older wines enjoyed by a few who simply dug the secondary and tertiary flavors the wines exhibited, and others who got zero enjoyment from these. Is one group ‘right’ and the other not? No, not at all.

I’ve also ‘enjoyed’ older wines for what the bottle represented - a time in my life, the age of the wine, the winemaker who made the wine - more than what the actual wine ‘presented’.

And one must allows throw in the caveat that ‘there are no great wines, just great bottles’. Bottle variation is a real thing - ESPECIALLY with wines bottled under cork and not filtered - and therefore one must deal with these variables as well.

Sorry for the rambling - just a few thoughts on the subject . . .

Cheers.

First, I like this as a topic. So thanks, Blake. Your subject line is an interesting question that I hope lots of people address on the merits. I for one vote better in the sense that I no longer particularly like most young Pinot Noir. Not all of it gets better when aged, but the Pinot Noir I like best is aged.

Second, I really don’t understand where the “experts” are coming from sometimes. Why do they even bother repeating the same old pronouncements about 90% “top” wines not being ageable at all without disclosing that they get that statistic by including just about all fermented (but not distilled) grape juice in their category of “top” wines? Who is their audience? It makes no sense, particularly since the drinkers of that 90% will never read what they write. Meanwhile, those of us who do drink ageable wines are the only people reading their stuff and wonder how these people justify their existence.

Third, but sort of on the same subject, the pronouncements of these experts reveal that they really are living in a non-evidence-based, pre-modern analytical and rhetorical arena. For example, it is both meaningless and unhelpful to divide the wines of the world into those that are “quality” and those that are not. Not only is there a very real debate about the very meaning of intrinsic quality when it comes to wine, but more importantly, quality is both multi-variable and exists on a spectrum. Similarly, the degree to which a wine “improves” with age is at least as subjective as a wine’s more general intrinsic quality. But I strongly suspect that these wine experts are simply begging the question and actually define quality primarily in terms of their perceptions of ageability. Whatever it is that they are doing, the claim that only “quality” wines improve with age drives me a little nuts, regardless of whether any of us here want to drink non-quality wines either fresh or with age.

Fourth, and now I’m clearly getting a bit fired up and should probably step away rather than continue to type (mmmm… nah!): while a lot of the other specific aging criteria cited by Blake in the OP is stuff we’ve all heard a million times, MOST of it is complete crap, other than specific points 1,2,4,7 (with some caveats), and 10 (and sort of 11, although using vintage as an independent factor makes no sense at all give the previous criteria that have some legitimacy, which together comprise the various vintage effects). The “persistence” rule in particular rule literally made me laugh out loud. Has that guy ever tasted a young, shut down Barolo?

Fifth, I’m with Greg; “domestic Pinot” is a meaningless category for everyone other than U.S. Customs.

Sixth, Blake, I really do appreciate your efforts to compile all this stuff in one place. Whether or not we’re on the same page regarding my criticisms of the “experts” in question, you’ve done me the service of making a very persuasive presentation of wide-ranging material evidence, ultimately carrying my own burden of proof, that public recognition as a wine “expert” is simply not a meaningful indicator of actual expertise.

I don’t have half the experience drinking older wines that others on this board do, but I have noticed a common phenomenon when reviewing tasting notes for domestic wines…

Tasting note for recent vintage wine goes like this - “Wine was good, but should be much better in 3-5 years…92 points…”

I then go back and check older vintage tasting notes for the same wine in CT, and more often than not, the scores are the same or even lower, with the exception of an extraordinary vintage.

I realize CT notes can be suspect and all, but it is interesting that in many cases, the wines don’t score higher. Could be those scorers don’t like the tertiary characteristics, but I’d think those folks would like older wines, given they’re cellaring and drinking them.

Now this comment I love. Assuming your experience is generalized, that says something very interesting about the tastes of the CT community at least. There are other issues of course (although the standard criticisms of CT scoring are not all relevant when looking solely at the scoring of a particular wine over time), but one I’ll raise for your consideration is that I often perceive people seeming to rate wines based on “potential” vs. current enjoyment.

The elements of a well aged wine and that of a young version of the same wine are so different that it takes great experience to be able to place them side by side. Then there is the fact noted above that the aromas and flavor a of aged wine do not appeal to everyone.

So who gets to determine if a given wine has “improved” or not? I love the flavors of older wine, so am likely to be more sympathetic to bottles that others might think are totally past it. I cannot count the number of times that I have read notes on line saying that a given wine is past its best when I think it is still on the upswing.

Yes, if consistently stored at much too high of a temperature. White wine is more delicate than red. Reds can handle temperature fluctuation much more easily. However, if kept at a constant 80˚ it will certainly spoil in a relatively short time. There have been plenty of posts here about wine that was exposed to heat for a short span (trunk of a car in summer, kept in the garage accidentally, etc.) compared to the same wine that was properly stored, and most favored the flavor of the wine that was ‘mistreated’. Friends and I have seen it first hand on a couple different occasions. The first time was with a 2000 Riserva Chianti - I forgot about one bottle in the basement and it went through 3 AC failures, then sat for several years. We brought it to dinner 2-ish years ago. My wife & I and another couple liked it so much we grabbed a properly stored bottle for the next dinner, but were let down. The tannins were notably stronger, the texture was rougher, and the cherry-like fruit flavors were muted in the ‘good’ bottle compared to the ‘bad’ one. Had a nearly identical situation with a 2001 Arrowood Cab not long after that. In short, I don’t worry so much about my reds getting a little over our normal mid-60’s cellar temps if they’re relatively younger vintages. Once they get close to maturity, then they go in one of the the wine fridges at 55˚ to prolong their drinking window.

Let’s face it there is strong motivation to publish articles like this in the wine world, especially when the focus is a variety collectors tend to age.

Beware! Your wines are not meant to age! You must buy new wines.

Of course we all buy new wines anyway.

Less though once I have a few cases from any particular producer aging peacefully.

Good point, and one I need to follow in my own purchasing.

This piece hasn’t motivated me to serially pull the corks of my Rhys or W-S bottles in an effort to turn 'em into pee-pee before their decline.