Thinking in graphs, I myself have come to conclusion that the wines either develop (trace an up/down arc), hold/plateau (a steady line that might go up a little at first and at some point starts to drop) or just fall apart (usually as high as they get upon bottling or soon thereafter, starting their decline pretty soon afterwards).
The best Madeiras seem to be the only wines not just holding but seemingly go up indefinitely.
The softening of tannins in red wines is something of an optional phenomenon - a thing that might happen or not. I’ve had some wines that haven’t softened up in +50 years and most likely they never will. I wonder if it has something to do with the quality of tannins?
Madirans seem to be behaving very differently, from wine to wine. I’ve had 20-30 yo Madirans that have been very backward, i.e. just doing that plateau thing. No development, no softening at all; Some that have developed and softened beautifully; And some that have aged very much, showing very developed tertiary characteristics, making me think whether the wine hold on much longer, yet the tannins coming across as tough and aggressive as in a Madiran only 2 years old.
Then there are wines that first seem to develop for a few decades and then just stopping developing - in the sense that you can have wines that are 50 years apart and you couldn’t honestly say which one is older if tasted blind. Wines like these are for example the Caremas by Cantina dei Produttori Nebbiolo di Carema - I’ve had some 15 wines from the past 50 years or so and they seem to develop for the first 20 years and then they just keep indefinitely, unchanging - and the red wines of Colares - I’ve had a dozen or so wines ranging always back to 1931; they seem to develop for 30-40 years, but after that they just seem to stop aging. We tasted side by side wines from 1974, 1967, 1955, 1949 and 1931 and although all different, it would’ve been impossible to put them in correct age order.
I think one problem in communicating is differences in experience. A number of us have had many, many older wines that have matured in something totally different from the ways they started. And, these wines don’t have to be the really expensive treasures. I have had, for example, 1985 Morot Beaune Bressandes and 1982 Meyney that clearly fit this bill. For $30 to $40, you can buy wines like Ridge Geyserville and Produttori Barbaresco that have a track record of aging well.
On the other hand, others of us really like very intense fruit filled California Cabernet or other wines that really are meant to be drunk on the younger side. But, some of these people decide to try aging one of these - they say to themselves, everyone talks about how much better wines age so I am going to hold onto a couple of bottles and see what happens. Well, after a few years, the intense fruit they really like fades and isn’t really replaced by anything that makes the wine special. So, they think that wine aging is a myth.
As I have said before, and others have said, most wines are not for aging. The only way I know whether a wine is made for aging or not is track record. Not just track record for the winery but also track record for the terroir. That is why I place a premium on California wines from wineries that have been around for a while with a record of making wines with a history of aging, rather than the latest hot new winery. Wineries like Ridge, Chateau Montelena, Heitz, Diamond Creek (their 1978s have been fabulous), Dunn, Dominus, etc., etc. I have focused a lot of my California Cabernet buying over the years on Ridge and Chateau Montelena because I have historically really liked their wines - personal preference.
I will start my questioning of the distinction between softening and aging with a simple disagreement with John about Olga Raffault. He said “I hosted at tasting of Olga Raffault Chinons (Loire cabernet franc) going back to the 1970s, and they were a bit like that. Even after 25 years, some hadn’t developed a lot of secondary aromas, though the tannins had softened and they showed some of that sweet fruit I mentioned above.” I haven’t tasted the Raffault Picasses from the mid 70s, but I have tasted the 85, 89 and 90 in the last year or so and the 90 numbers of times over the past maybe eight years or so. The fruit in these wines doesn’t taste remotely to me like the fruit in the 07s–which one can actually drink–much less more recent wines. Now that may mean that we just disagree about a wine. It’s no doubt happened before without our knowing it and will no doubt happen again. But your notion of softening can cover a multitude of sins. I really doubt you don’t find the wines from 85, 89 and 90 more ready to drink, more pleasant to drink, to speak vaguely. Now I’ll ask directly, do you really find the sole difference between those years and, say, the 02s, which I choose because it is starting to come around but still tastes young, to be softening of tannins and not developments of earthier, secondary and tertiary flavors? If so, I guess, I’ll have to write this off as different strokes. If not, I’d ask you to think about the distinction between softening and aging (without even getting into the question of whether softening isn’t just an aspect of aging).
To keep this focussed, none of this goes to the question of holding, which I’ve also experienced and which is a very different phenomenon. I wish I had the chemistry to address it, because I don’t understand it. But I don’t question it.
We didn’t have the 07 Raffault in the tasting, so I can’t speak to the fruit in that wine versus the vintages we did taste. But there was surprisingly little difference in flavor profile and structure between, say, the 2010 and 2005s we had and the '89 and '93. (Link to tasting notes.) And that wasn’t just me. We discussed that fact at the time. As I said in the tasting notes, the '89 showed much less secondary development than I’d expect in a 28-year-old Bordeaux of similar reputation.
That’s why I floated the idea that the Picasses might be one of those “Holding” wines. That doesn’t mean they’re not delicious; lots of Cal cabs that seem frozen after decades are very tasting.
Putting aside the 93, which I haven’t tasted, and the 90, which you don’t comment on, that still leaves us the 89 and the 10 in common. I’ll have to try them again when I get back to my cellar in the states. I doubt I’ll feel differently. I also have no idea if this disagreement can be generalized to the issue of the distinction between softening and aging.
I meant I don’t know if our disagreement about the Olga’s means we disagree that about whether there can be softening without aging or whether we just disagree about the Olga’s (or even just that I wasn’t there at the tasting you wrote about and you haven’t tasted the bottle from my cellars). Disagreements are like that.
I’m not claiming that Raffault’s wines halt and don’t develop. I just raised the question. But, at the least, their evolution seems glacial. I was trying to think of an example other than some Cal cabs of a wine that plateaus and holds unchanged.
I gave brutal feedback two years in a row to a wine competition where some of the best wines - the ones that needed age - finished near the bottom below a lot of mediocrity. One vehement defender provided me a list of the judges to prove how qualified they were, how wrong I was. Yeah… About 98% were professionals who only taste current release wines.
The OP asked three questions, and I think a lot of the answers hit them, if some perhaps obliquely.
But too what extent does such short-term airing mimic or allow for the change in flavor that would occur during extended cellaring? > As Alan said, not at all.
And what variables effect that outcome: varietal; ABV; acidity, etc.?
All of those. I wouldn’t expect most Pinot Gris to age nearly as long, nor turn into something nearly as complex, as Barbaresco, based on my experiences with both. But I would be happy to be proven wrong.
How can one best enjoy the taste differences between cellar-able wine versus PnP wine when the cellar-able wine is opened long before its drinking window?> You enjoy it for what it is, when you have it. One problem with a lot of wine drinkers, at least when they get together, is that they sometimes don’t simply enjoy the wine. They are too anxious to tell you that it’s good but not quite as good as the XXX that they had a month ago, or that it would really be better if it had just a few more years, or that it still has so much to offer but if only we would have had it five years ago, etc. This is nearly always the case when people are drinking Burgundy, which is a good reason to avoid it - you might turn into one of those guys.
A few of my friends arranged an informal “Kabinett Cup 2016” competition a few weeks ago, i.e. they had collected a 50-bottle selection of Riesling Kabinetts from 2016 and we tasted them all blind. One of the discussions we had before the tasting was how to rate the wines - based on their current performance or their potential to become great in the future. I think this is an important thing to discuss beforehand, so the judges know with what criteria to rate and the people seeing the results know why and how these wines were rated as such.
But they judge what is in the glass at that point in time they aren’t judging potential. Structure is fine but if a wine is closed, backwards, tight, etc, etc, it just isn’t showing well at that point in time because it needs 20+ years, then it just isn’t going to do well when they’re looking at how it shows at that specific point in time.
The wines are blind so that’s really all they can and should do…
People in the trade don’t just try current releases…they just overwhelmingly do relative to older wines because of the number of wines they try. I would say they try just as much (or more) older wine than most people…Of course it all depends on what they’re doing in the wine trade as well…as well as are they into wine or just work in it.
But that’s exactly the problem Wes was referring to in his post. Knowledgeable tasters can see the potential in young, tight wines, particularly when you know the category you’re tasting. From what Wes said, it was just a matter of ignorance in the event he was involved in.
Suffice it to say, not everyone agrees. You have strong views on this, as you made clear in that old thread, but I think it’s fair to say you are something of an outlier on this issue. Simply stating your proposition doesn’t make it so.
I’m going abandon most of the debate we had back and forth earlier, because I realized that we started out with different definitions of “aging”, and therefore a lot of those subsequent questions and arguments were not really focusing on the same thing.
But I find that my previous issue with the distinctions of holding, softening, and aging/gaining complexity can also be illustrated here in the Raffault example. Last year I also had, in a single tasting, the '79, '90, and '11 of Les Picasses. I thought the '79 and '90 were quite similar, and very much “a different wine” from the '11. While similar in profile between the '79 and '90, the '79 had more sweet fruit and some of that forest floor nose that I was able to discern it as the older wine on first sniff. No, the complexity did not increase (or even just change) that much like a fine Bordeaux or Burgundy would in a similar time frame. But by grouping Picasses closer to the Holding category, indicating that it doesn’t age or it doesn’t soften, I would disagree with that.
And if a holding wine “eventually softens with a lot of age”, then isn’t the distinction between these two coined terms blurry to begin with?
Not that many, probably around 20-30 bottles, of assorted varieties and regions.
And no, I have not had the opportunity to track the same wine over 10, 20 years.
It’s just that having spent some years in the audio/stereo hobby, I’m a little sensitive (I think…) to what can actually be scientifically explained vs what is more on the subjective perception side.
I also think that aside from drinking more, engaging in these conversations or even arguments can help me learn more faster.
You should dive into the hifi topic in Asylum. Right now there is debate raging over whether myrtle is the right wood for upgraded electronics feet, or indeed, whether any wood is appropriate. Maybe only on fruit days.
