Knowing a wine

How many times must you taste a wine in order to know it well?

The idea came to me in replying to another thread, and granted, this is a philosophical question, but how many times does it take you to taste a wine before you really know it? To the point where you are familiar enough that you know exactly what to anticipate if you’re opening a sound bottle.

By wine, I mean an individual bottling from a single vintage e.g. 1989 Lynch Bages or NV Krug 163, not just a house/parcel/region (“I know what Latour… La Tache… or Hermitage tastes like”)

Obviously the time in a wine’s evolution/lifespan is of interest here. You could know a wine in its youth, then it develops into something different

let’s also assume we are discussing uncorked well stored bottles.

Would love if folks would post the wine they “know” best. Cheers!

Depends on the wine.

Some wines I know after one taste.

Some I will never more.

The best (and sometimes the most complex) wines are easiest to know fastest.

Same as the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

“Knowing” a wine is a lot like a marriage: you need to live with it EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
Otherwise, you don’t know nothing.

Like Marcus said, it really depends on what one means by knowing a wine. I worked weekends at a tasting room for a small winery back in the 90s. It was standard practice to taste every bottle before serving to others. That meant every open bottle from the day before and any new bottle opened. Tasting the same wine multiple times per weekend over the course of a year or two is eye opening and made me realize how little I understand wine. There was one wine in particular, a 1988 Merlot from Oakville that really wasn’t that good. I had been tasting it for 8 months or so when I came in and went through the normal routine before opening and had to taste it twice. I thought something got mixed up as it wasn’t the same wine. I liked it. The character was completely different from just a week ago. I opened a fresh bottle with the same results. The wine stayed that way for 3-4 weeks and then got angry again. It stayed angry for another 3 months before making another appearance. This one a little longer but still it soon went back into its shell. I left that job before it came back out again.

Many years later, I got a good deal on some 2001 Niepoort Redoma. So far I have consumed 36 bottles and still have a few left. That wine has changed at least 5 times over the years. Some changes are subtle and others more obvious. There was at least one period when I lost hope on the wine and figured I wasted money having still have of my original stash unconsumed at the time. Drank a number of bottles during this time and it just never seemed as enjoyable as before and nothing I would have bought. But eventually it came through it as a much different wine but something that was once again enjoyable.

I can go on. I have had a short list of wines that I didn’t like the first time so buried my remaining bottles to come back years later and find that they morphed into something else entirely. Such that I no longer assume I know any wine, just the bottle that I have at the time.

This is why I feel you should buy multiple bottles of the same vintage. I don’t feel you can really know a wine from just one bottle, especially if you are sharing a bottle with your wife or friends. To me, it takes a minimum of two bottles, but I really start to get that relationship after the third bottle. By tasting several bottles of the same wine over time, you pick up nuances that you didn’t notice.

I voted 2-3 because my answer is 3. Triangulation. One never knows if they know a wine after 1. 2 is the lowest possible answer, in my mind.

Some wines have a lot more vintage and age variation than others, so I guess the answer would be different. For example, to really know Leoville Barton may take a lot more experience than to really know The Prisoner.

Brian, thanks for sharing your experiences and the lessons learned . . . good stuff! -Jim

Agree, thanks for these thoughtful responses.

Presumably one would know best the wine tasted the most frequently, along many points in its lifespan. I don’t buy in case quantity (too many wines I want to try, and not enough $$ or storage), and I guess it’s not so important to know a single bottling of wine unless it’s a benchmark or a wine you plan on serving a lot. Far more value in familiarity with a house style or attributes that define a region/parcel since those inform purchasing decisions.

Wines I have purchased in some quantity each of the last few years and feel I know pretty well include:

• Teeter Totter Chardonnay
• William Fevre Chablis Champs Royeaux
• Shafer Relentless
• Two Hands Bella’s Garden
• Black Slate Porrera

Getting pretty comfortable with Realm The Bard and Pax Sonoma Hillsides as well.
Have tasted a large handful of Pichon Barons from the 70s through 2015 and am starting to understand that house. I have a lunch and vertical tasting planned at the chateau this summer which should be enlightening

It takes me 4-6 times to get there on a given wine. Less if it is really distinctive (see LdH blanco). But as mentioned, there is always potential to understanding more deeply than that.