If a wine is great before it reaches “maturity” or very early on in is life, do you age it any further or do you make an effort to drink the remainder in a relatively short time frame.
I find 10-12 years is my sweet spot and I’m afraid to age bottles I like any further. I find most older wines too oxidized.
I love wines that provide pleasure in their youth yet clearly have the structure to develop further. I also find that when a wine is great it will communicate that to you in some way, even when it’s not showing quite at its best yet. Even vintage port, which is built to last for two generations at least, provides a sort of exhilarating and almost painful satisfaction in its youth. That being said I agree that I find the 10-15 year drinking window to be optimal for the age worthy wines I’ve had experience with. I don’t suppose that’s necessarily the correct drinking window for great Bordeaux, Burgundy or Barolo, though.
Ageing wine and when to drink it is an incredibly subjective matter. It depends entirely on your personal flavour profile. If you like wines aged 10-12 years then drink wines in that age range. Similarly if you like wines incredibly young, drink those. There’s no right or wrong answer, only one’s personal preferences. No need to age a wine further if you think you won’t like the flavour profile. If you feel like you may be missing out on potential further development tuck away a bottle or two for a few more years to see how it evolves. Though from the sounds of it you have some experience with it and know what you enjoy, so as long as you’re enjoying the wines you’re drinking, no need to worry about it.
It’s hard to generalize, as the right age for different ageworthy wines varies so widely between producer, region, vintage, variety, etc. There would seem to be many wines out there where 10-12 is way too young – e.g. Bordeaux and Barolo from good vintages.
But it sounds like you’re engaging in the right kind of thinking – what are the ages at which I most like the wines? That’s all that really matters to you. And I do get the “better too early than too late” bias, which makes sense, particularly if your tastes run towards more youthful wines.
+1
What wines are you drinking mostly?
I enjoy everything. Mostly between 35-$200, with most wines in the $45-65 range. I enjoy BDX around 10-15 years. At that point it has that nice graphite. I find that Shiraz develops that nice oregano, basil character for cold climate producers around the same time. I actually enjoy young Nebbiolo.
I was just wondering in general at what age most people are drinking their wines and why.
You’re looking for a generalization that doesn’t exist. The answer is (a) personal and (b) depends on the wine.
For example, I like Ridge Zinfandels young for their fruit, but many people love them at 10-20 years.
I can enjoy Nebbiolo d’Alba young, but much prefer my Barolo and Barbaresco with serious age – 20+ years.
I can enjoy a top-flight southern Cotes du Rhone young or with 10 years.
I also like sweet German riesling best with a lot of age, 15 years or more.
Even within a category, I may like some Bordeaux petit chateau in the 4-8 year range, classified growths from less powerful vintages in the 12-20 year range, classified growths from more powerful vintages at 20+ years, maybe right bankers shaded earlier than left bankers, etc.
Anyway, I’d encourage you to adapt your rule of thumb to some degree by type of wine, producer, vintage and so forth. Though if it’s working fine for you and you don’t want the added complication, that’s certainly cool too.
Also, “both of the above”.
Some wines built to age can be quite attractive young (if you like that sort of thing), then shut down after say four years, for up to a decade before arising from their slumber.
This caught my eye. If a wine feels oxidized, then it is oxidized. A good mature wine should not be oxidized.
I’ve had wonderfully vibrant, complex wines clocking at 50-70 years and showing no oxidation. Perhaps some oxidative qualities, yes, but then again, even a 2-yo white Burgundy shows oxidative qualities.
It depends on the wine and your taste and experience. If you find that the wines you buy taste best at 10-12 years old, you should drink them at 10-12 years old.
I recently had a 2002 Clos des Lambrays. It is excellent when first released, it was excellent 10 years later, but it was better than either of those last weekend. And, I am in no rush to drink my remaining bottles because it will be quite good for a long time.
I agree with you on personal preference, but I think it also depends on what wines you drink. I think you would get a very different answer if the wine in question is Chateau Montelena Cabernet or Ridge Montebello than would be the case if the wine in question is a fruit forward Cabernet meant to be drunk young. Personal preference certainly is important, but it is not the entire determining factor and this is IMHO only partly subjective.
I largely agree with your’s and many other people’s stated examples on this thread. I just always err on the side of being too careful and cognisant that people have varying preferences for wines, because there’s no such thing as the best wine or the best time to drink a wine, there’s only what’s the best wine and the best time to drink it for you. And while many on this forum and elsewhere may form consensus on the quality of wines and when to drink them, at the end of the day it’s entirely based on personal preferences.
For example, several friends of mine enjoy drinking their cult Napa Cabs and first growths young. While I don’t share their preferences in drinking windows for those wines, to not recognise that their preferences are equally as valid as mine would be quite obtuse. Even if that person’s preferences are different than mine, yours, or even a majority of people, they are entitled to their preference.
We can engage in constructive conversations around offering recommendations for wines to try or encouraging they try more aged wines to expand their palate. But if at the end of they day, they’ve in good faith tried a broad range of wines in varying ages and developed a clear preference, denying that is just rude IMO.
The key is your if. Many people have drunk a great deal of wine, even expensive wine, but do not drink the wines that have a track record for aging. If he said, for example, that he has tasted 25 year old Chateau Montelena and found it over the hill, I would agree with you. But if his experience is with modern wines made for early consumption and found that those were over the hill at 10-12 years old, then I would say he does not yet know if he likes aged wine.
Also, a lot of people cannot tell the difference between wines that are closed and those that are over the hill. I see this on CellarTracker reviews all the time. Someone could find a 10-12 year old wine “over the hill” and then find the same wine wonderful at 20.
All I am saying is that there objective and subjective parts to this. The objective part is that some wines age well but that most do not. If the OP has had wines that objectively age well but he does not like them with age, then he can conclude that he does not like aged wine. But, if his experience is with wines that objectively do NOT age well, then he really doesn’t know what his subjective view would be of a wine with age that objectively ages.
I agree. I think it largely comes down to how one structures and frames their comments. No single person is the sole authority on when is best to drink wine, but collective, I reckon most wine fans like to encourage people to try different wines so people can expand their palates. If its towards that goal, I’m all for it, if its geared towards making someone drink a wine solely in the manner that one enjoys it, then its unwarranted. I’m all for trying as many different wines in as many different styles as possible as I find that both highly educational and informative and just plain fun. But if someone expresses clear preferences, I’m never one to try to invalidate it.
Seiber covered much of it as far as no rules of thumb. Even among a certain bottling the best windows can vary greatly vintage to vintage.
You really have to know whether you like wine aged or not. You have to figure that out for yourself. Not everyone really likes wines once they start maturing. Some of us prefer them that way.
There are lots of expensive wines that are likely better in their first 10 years of life than after. But since they are expensive and well known it’s assumed they should be “aged”. You have to understand what you want from your wines young or old. If that in your face fruit is what you dig then you really shouldn’t be ‘aging’ your wines much. If you like secondary or tertiary characters then you should be not only aging your wines but seeking out only those that get better over time.
Remember that the point of aging a wine is to get something better down the road than now. If you think it’s something that can’t get better than it is today, drink it.