Approach to Aging Wines

WINE TALK
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I am curious what people’s approach is to drinking aged wines. For instance, do you focus on certain types of grapes, or producers, or vintage, or some combination?

I ask because I am of a mixed mindset, and my approach is admittedly not very sophisticated.

I have had some very tannic wines that are young - a 2019 Scavino Bric del Fiasco, 2018 Volpaia Il Puro, and 2019 Lynch Bages come to mind – that absolutely without question require aging because they are much too rough in their infancy. In fact, even the 2009 Bric del Fiasc that I drank last year was too tannic and needed probably at least 5 more years in the bottle.

OTOH, I have recently opened Barolo and Barbaresco that are 10-15 years old that either are oxidized or that lack grip and the fruit is dulled - some that I recall are 2009 Prunotto Bussia, 2013 Ca’ Rome Maria di Brun, 2013 Sottimano Pajare, 2013 Ceretto, and 2011 Spinona Bricco Faset. I have also had more “basic” Barolo from a recent vintage at a lower price point - like a 2016 Cascina Nuova and 2019 Vajra Albe - that I enjoyed and did not think required more aging.

Yesterday I had a 2010 Stags Leap Audentia Napa Cab and it was good, but as a result of the aging, it did not quite taste like a Cab - almost like it had transformed into another type of wine.

Indeed, with aged wines that oxidized taste comes in - kind of like bruised fruit or vinegar or caramelized apple - that I personally do not care for.

As you can see, my approach is kind of hit-and-miss, and, admittedly, much less scientific than many other Berserkers. Moreover, my pallet is probably different - I like a wine with good grip and vibrant fruit.

Hence, I am curious what your approach is to aging wines.

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It’s trial and error, like most things. But you’re on the right track in terms of benchmarking your palate to see if you even like older wines before spending money/effort to age them!

One caveat is that you want to get some info on whether the aged wines you’ve tasted were well-stored and whether the vintages/winemaking were similar to recent releases. There are all sorts of reasons why wines from previous vintages at age 10-20-30 won’t necessarily taste like wines from current vintages when they get to age 10-20-30.

But yes, broadly put, if you prefer fresh vibrant fruit, you probably want to focus more on younger wines!

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It took me years to arrive at my approach , but at this point I try to purchase multiples of the wines so that I can take a peek when young (even though any/all research tells me the wine is young) and then try successive bottles as the years go by.

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Did you age those wines yourself or did you buy them when they were aged? As we discussed several times, provenance is most important.

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I have a similar approach to Terry. I buy wines I want to cellar on release. At this point, most of what I’m buying is from producers and regions I know fairly well, so I have a decent idea of how much time those wines need or at least when they might be approachable. So I might buy some wines now and not touch them for 5-10 years because past vintages have needed that much time. But one of the joys of cellaring wine is being able to follow the wine over its life to see how it changes. So, some wines I might want to taste on release, and maybe at 4 years old, then 7, then 10. Some I want not taste on release at all but will taste at them at 10 years, then 15, then 20. It depends on the wine. I normally buy in 3-4 bottle lots which gives me some flexibility in tasting it.

There are a few wines where I could only get one bottle (because of cost or scarcity), and while they can still be terrific one-off experiences, I really do prefer having multiples to be able to follow a wine. Neither approach (buying singles or multiples) is “better.” It’s just a matter of how you like to experience wine.

I have a friend who cooks professionally and learned early in his wine career that he didn’t like very old wines where most of the flavors were oxidative, so he made a habit of drinking his wines earlier than I would have. But, again, that suited his tastes and preferences better. A lot of it comes down to being honest about your own preferences. Some folks prefer younger wines, but they hang on to things because others have convinced them that older is always better and that epiphanies can only happen with aged wines. It’s not true. It’s really a matter pf preference. So being honest with yourself about what you really like is paramount.

At the end of the day, I stick to “better too young, than too old.” If I’m not sure how something will age and hold up, I tend to try them and drink them younger. While drinking well aged bottles is a true joy, drinking something past prime that you’ve held for years is depressing. With time, you start to get a sense of when wines should be in your personal sweet spot.

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My approach is to go to the CellarTracker website and see what other consumers are saying about a wines readiness to drink. I tend to gravitate towards the tasting notes of people whose palate aligns with my experiences. This influences my decision to open a bottle or to age it longer. Just my two cents, I hope this is helpful.

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This is something I’ve thought about and worked on for a long time, because early in my wine journey I discovered that I really loved aged wines. My high level approach is to focus on the kinds of wines I’ve figured out that I love (Barolo, Champagne, and many others) and then learn which producers I prefer and how much age matches my taste preferences. But understanding ageability is complicated! So let’s dive in (massive wall of text incoming!).

  1. There is no general rule for all wines about aging. Broad categories of wines (eg. Red Bordeaux, or German Riesling) have some consistent characteristics, but even so there is no universal generalization that is true. And yes, this makes thing harder.

  2. Nearly as important - CellarTracker (CT) is (for me at least) the most valuable tool for understanding how wines are aging. Yes, it has lots of spurious data, so the key is to find those people whose reviews make consistent sense, and pay attention to them. But there is no larger set of data points of how wines age that is freely searchable. Of course, this site is hugely valuable as well, but doesn’t have the amazing depth and width of coverage as CT.

  3. As important as the other two - your own tastes and preferences are your guide. And the only way you can understand what you like is to sample lots of wines. So get drinking! And take notes (I use CT) because memory is not very reliable.

What is Age? There is no single answer. For some people, 5 years is a lot of age for a wine. For others, 50. That is compounded by all the variability of aging. For me (broad generalization!), top Red Bordeaux in the 25 - 40 year range is nicely aged. But I doubt I’d want to drink California Pinot that old - maybe 10 - 20 years would be ideal.

How Wines Age. Different kinds of wines age very differently. What are the key factors?

  • Region/Varietal: Sonoma Zinfandel, Santa Barbara Pinot, German Riesling, Champagne, etc. etc.
  • Vintage: Aging variability is compounded by vintage. Some vintages age glacially (1986 Bordeaux) and some not (well) at all (1987 Bordeaux). This takes research to figure out.
  • Producer/Winemaking/Intent: Many wines are deliberately made to have long, slow, aging. These wines may be very hard to drink when young. Your 2019 Lynch Bages is a good example. I bought that wine and don’t intend to open one for a long time! Some producers really try to make wines meant to age. Others (most!) are trying to make wines that are immediately accessible, and won’t age well. In a region as huge as Bordeaux, with thousands of producers, there are wines across the spectrum of ageability in every vintage. But there are often happy (or unhappy!) accidents in which a wine intended to age doesn’t, or vice versa.
  • Winemaking Intent, Part 2. Producers often have a wide range of wines from the same varietal/vintage with very different aging intent and potential. Generally, their more expensive bottlings are the ones designed to age longer. This is very clear with Barolo. A producer’s single vineyard bottlings are usually the slowest to develop, their blend (often called a Classico here on WB) less so, and the entry level bottlings are made to be consumed very soon. For example, Vajra’s Bricco delle Viole Barolo and Ravera Barolo are very long agers, their Albe Barolo a medium ager, and Langhe Nebbiolo one to drink now. Note that Vajra makes many different wines (11 Nebbiolos in 2019!) with a lot of different characteristics.
  • Storage Conditions/Cork Quality. Different bottles from the same barrel/vintage can age very differently. Storage conditions (i.e. temperature and humidity) and cork quality will absolutely affect how bottles age. These variables widen as time passes. So for older bottles expect some surprises! Part of the fun, but can be frustrating.

How to Learn. Yep, you have to do your research, and drink lots of wine. Yay! The good part! But how to find examples of aged wines?

  • Make friends. Wine lovers are generous souls. So find some folks near where you live and drink some wine together. Maybe they have older wine than you, but they also love sampling your young wines, too. There are always people here on WB looking to get together with other Berserkers.
  • Buy the stuff and try it. There is a ton of aged wine available in the market. Yes, some can be pricey, but you don’t have to try the top dollar bottles to learn about your preferences. Many of the auction sites sell bottles in single bottle lots (like Winebid) so that is an ideal venue for sampling. I’ve bought hundreds of bottles there for just this purpose. Definitely learn about what bottle conditions to avoid to reduce your risk of truly damaged wine, but that’s a subject for a different post (with some initial thoughts below).

Side note on aging curves: One of the most daunting things about opening ageable wines is the dreaded dead zone. Maybe the wines are closed tight. In other words - they don’t smell or taste like much of anything. Or perhaps they are ultra-tannic, so impossible to actually drink. So this is where you have to do your research, and as I mentioned earlier, CT is a great guide. Here on WB there is plenty of discussion about this as well. And wines that are “open” are not just tasty, but change over time. The interesting smell/taste changes in wine over time are a key thing that people love about aged wine.

What about provenance (where the wine comes from?): This is a subject of a lot of debate here, so I’ll just lay out my point of view. Many will say that provenance is insanely important, and you should only buy direct from wineries, or buy young wines on release and age them yourself. I disagree. This is a logical impossibility (unless money is no object) if you want to buy older wines (sometimes that even means more than just 3 or 4 years old, let alone 20 or 30 years). Here are the highlights of what I look for, and my success rate is excellent. You can find much more detail on the Web.

  1. Reliable high quality sources - auction houses as well as retailers. Do they note conditions of the wine they sell? Do they store their wine in temperature controlled facilities? Do they have good reputations here on WB? Yes, you have to figure this out.
  2. Good condition. Most importantly, I never buy bottles with seepage, pushed corks, or depressed corks. These are the most clear signs that bottles have not been stored well. Yes, some bottles with these conditions might be perfectly fine, but why take the risk? There are millions of other bottles you can buy in good condition.
  3. Color. Harder to assess, except for very sweet wines (Sauterne, Auslese Riesling) which generally get darker as they age.
  4. Fill. Bottles tend to have lower fills as they age (over decades). Bottle with very low fill rates relative to others of similar age likely have cork or other problems, so I avoid those.

Should you age your own wines? Aging wines can be a significant investment.

  • First, figure out if you actually like aged wine.
  • Make sure you have a place to store the wine that will protect it well. Typically people start with a dedicated wine fridge that will keep the wine at an appropriate temperature and humidity. A regular fridge is really too cold for this.
  • As you get in deeper, you could decide to build a dedicated storage room/cellar. This is an even bigger commitment though!
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You’ve already received some great, thoughtful posts and I’m sure more are incoming.

I just want to add two, basic but important things:

  1. Maybe you don’t like aged wine.
  2. That’s totally fine.

:cheers:

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There are many good posts above. I will add the following: discovering the answer to this question for you is the reason for buying wine in multiples and aging it yourself (edited to add, as @Terry_H_a_r_r_i_s said). Yes, you can buy already aged wine. Yes, you can learn a lot from that. Yes, you can learn from other people’s bottles at tastings. You can and should do all these things as part of the process. But I believe the ultimate answer, and one without substitute, is to purchase, as soon as you are able, a quantity of a certain wine(s), be it 3/4/6/12 - whatever you have funds and space for - and follow it over time. Drink a bottle on release, another in a year or two, another in five etc. You can do this with one, two, or more wines as you have space and means. As you move through this progression, you will learn how these wines develop and how you as a drinker prefer them. Then you can apply this knowledge to other similar wines, or other vintages of the same wine and gradually expand. You can speed up or slow down your curve based on your enjoyment. Eventually, though luck will always play a part, you will find you are getting way more hits than misses, and you will feel confident making cellar choices, if you choose to pursue this approach.

This process is slow. It requires patience. It can be run alongside other options mentioned above. But, in my opinion, is absoltely the best way to answer your question. Many choose to follow only the quicker options, and for many that is enough. As I have often said “a lifetime of effort in pursuit of understanding is not for everyone.”

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Only you can answer for yourself.

The hard part about collecting AND aging wines is storage. You’ll likely end up with more wine than you have room for so it creates a storage need either for another fridge/cellar or an off site space.

This means that if you like wine with more age your buying habits should be centered on buying wine you can drink now so you’re not cellaring if you don’t have to.

As to the grapes, I like around 10 years before I consider opening a Napa cab. If I have multiple bottles I might open one sooner but likely not unless I know the producer’s wine doesn’t age well.

For Syrah I like 7+ years at a minimum.

For Zinfandels I drink in the 4-6 year range and may hold back a bottle or two of something like a Papera.

Chardonnay is tricky, I’m thinking 4-6 years as well and more if the producer is known to age.

For merlot, probably the same as Syrah, 7+ and with multiple bottles I’ll try one every now and then to see how they’re doing. Some of these age very long.

Bordeaux, still fairly new to my collection. I’m guessing 12-15 years before opening and the big guns like first growths or super seconds 18-25 years.

This all really boils down to what YOU like. Do you want the young tannins and the fruit before it starts a transition to secondary? I feel for me like I enjoy wines between primary and closer to secondary phases and less so as a tertiary only wine.

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Whenever possible I try and buy multiple bottles and try one at a fairly young age to give me an idea of how much aging is required. I also refer to CT. That said, my experiences with old wines are somewhat limited and mixed. Regarding the Barolo/Barbaresco wines you mention: I find Scavino requires a lot time to open up. Sottimano varies (2010 Cotta is still like a closed fist, the 2015s are drinking nicely). “Basic” Barolo is often very enjoyable at a young age: Vietti and Altare 2016 were drinking well about a year ago and Trediberri’s “Berri” 2020 was fantastic about 6 months ago. I completely get your point about not caring too much for the taste of aged wines. At a Produttori Asili vertical last year most wines older than 20 years tasted depleted to me, but others loved them :man_shrugging:

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The winemaking can be a big factor in aging. Sottimano cut back on new oak in the late 2000s, according to Kerin O’Keefe, but the wine still goes into mostly used barriques for malolactic fermentation – a hallmark of the modernist approach.

Scavino has also cut way back on barriques in recent years, so the evolution is no doubt different than it was a few years back. (A '96 Bric del Fiasc I opened a few years ago was backward – it was a very tannic vintage – but without any precision or typical Barolo character, I assume because of all the new barriques in that period, rotofermenters, malo in barrique).

In good vintages, 20-year-old Produttori Asili shouldn’t be “depleted,” but in weaker vintages, or with so-so storage, I can see how they might have packed the punch you were looking for.

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Nebbiolo is a tricky variety in general as concerns aging. The structure tends to demand at least mid-term aging. But if the tannins of this most tannic of varieties aren’t managed well enough by the producer, they are likely to outlast the fruit and other primary or secondary characteristics.

Producers who introduce a lot of oxygen during the multi-year elevage also can hasten the development of oxidative characteristics. Finally, in the increasingly common hot vintages, producers may end up with either overripe fruit character while waiting to harvest at phenolic maturity, or be forced to harvest prior to phenolic maturity, leading to astringent, green tannins.

Overall, I’m in your camp of preferring a maximally complex wine that melds primary, secondary and tertiary characteristics, without being tired or fully transformed. The best wines have a relatively wide window of this type of maturity, 3, 5, maybe 10 years. But most wines, even from well reputed regions, do not have this potential. A vintage like 2016 in Piedmont (and really most of Europe) threads this needle quite consistently, but most vintages it ends up being producer and site-specific.

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Thanks for information, John! I knew Scavino had changed his approach to winemaking in recent years, but wasn’t aware that Sottimano had too (either way: his wines are fantastic!).

I was surprised by the older Asili, I’d have expected them to age better. We drank a 05 Rio Sordo at a restaurant near Barbaresco last autumn and it was absolutely fantastic!

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Getting to know your own palate preference for wine maturity will help the most. It sounds like you’ve got there already (though palate preferences can change, and a stunning wine can change it as well). Some love young Barolo, for the battle between fruit and tannins, whilst I like extended maturity where it can be quite ethereal. In that I’ll tolerate a degree of oxidation if there’s enough complexity to outweigh it, and I also don’t mind a dash of brett either.

In days gone by a 10-12 year old Barolo/Barbaresco that was oxidised, would have been blamed squarely on a faulty cork. Now we have additional doubts about some of the modernist wine techniques, that may be to blame for higher numbers of bottles falling over in a heap in that timeframe.

There’s also the traditional Barolo closing down, that’s less prevalent today, but absolutely still happens with many trad producers and in more firm/austere vintage. Yes the fruit will dull, and the tannins come to the fore. It can be very hard work / unenjoyable to drink these. In time, many but not all, will emerge into the sort of complex / ethereal maturity that I adore. Based on your preferences, it may not be worth your while waiting 30, 40+ years for this, but instead seeking more open vintages (e.g. similar to how 2007 was, with very few closing down hard, and some never seeming to close down). Other than that I’d suggest drinking them young ‘on the fruit’ and just choosing some meaty accompaniment (e.g. steak) to keep the tannins in check.

I always liked Jeremy Oliver (Aussie wine critic)'s approach to drinking windows. At first sight it looked (overly) precise, but closer inspection showed he only ever applied one of about 8 different windows e.g 1-2 years, 2-4 years, 5-8 years and so on Thus if it was a sturdier version that prior vintages he might amend his normal 5-8 year window for a wine into a 8-12 year window. I liked this approach as it showed how imprecise the whole approach was.

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Properly stored 10-15 year old wine will frequently have dulled fruit - this is what’s called the closed or dumb period. Another 5-15 years will bring the fruit back and reveal other dimensions beyond the fruit, assuming it’s ageable wine in the first place.

Properly stored 10-15 year old wine should NOT have any oxidized features and the presence of them is evidence the wine was either 1) poorly stored or 2) poorly made. You’ve listed a bunch of Barolos and this is a region where a lot of producers don’t take as much care to avoid oxidation as perhaps they should. (I am going to catch a lot of flak for that one - so be it…) But storage tends to be the more frequent culprit than winemaking.

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I do think it isn’t fair to conflate aged wines with oxidized wines. Most good aged wines should not be throwing any sherry notes or vinegar notes. There are some notable exceptions like Trokaji during the communist era - those wines often had severe oxidative notes.

Best advice is to find someone who has a lot of aged wines and wants to drink them with you. Doing a Bordeaux vertical with say a 96, 00, 10 and a 16 vintage wine of the same wine can be very useful. I also am guilty of “infanticide” - I usually break into them on release - take some notes and then follow them over the ensuing decades. The problem is it takes 20 to 25 years to really begin to understand how your wine ages. Sourcing old wines as mentioned creates a problem of provenance.

One other very important point - warmer vintages and modern winemaking has changed the algorithm pretty dramatically. So many wines seem very approachable at an early age versus winemaking 50 years ago. That is a broad statement but I think it is often true of both Napa and Bordeaux. But that is a different topic!

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We could argue over your time line for the “dumb” phase. I think sometimes it is as early as just 2 to 3 years after release. Sometimes I feel like the fruit never comes back even at 20 to 25 years. Suffice to say for Bordeaux it is a real phenomenon.

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I drink younger wines in a pack similar to @Terry_H_a_r_r_i_s and @Kevin.h as well. Many of my purchases come in three-packs (often due to requirements). I usually open one bottle early to assess how it tastes when it’s young and how it may evolve. I will obviously decant the wines for an extended period, sometimes more than eight hours.

I then tend to keep the remaining bottles for a while, waiting until I feel they are ready to be opened. My determination on when to try another bottle depends on several factors, such as what others say about the wine’s readiness on CellarTracker (CT), how it tasted previously, or simply whether I enjoyed it before and if the setting feels right to have another. There’s no exact science to it; it’s all about how you enjoy the wine.

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Honestly, I think many people look at aging with too large an emphasis on tannins.

If you’re planning on cellaring wines and would like them to age gracefully these are the things I look for:

Acidity, pH matters in terms of ageworthiness. Without it wines are more likely to have the fruit go over the hill in the cellaring process. Acidity also iss felt in a similar place in the palate to attingency and tannins, so by having good acidity once tannins are more resolved you still have length to the wine. But almost everyone thinks they like acidity without aknowledging that many modern wines have perception of acid-but do not have the acidity that is required for long term aging. In terms of Barolo or Barbaresco being oxidized within 10-15 years, cork failure and lower acidity in modern vintages(arbitrarily lets say 2000 forward) due to a warming climate speeds up the aging curve.

Low to medium alcohol-this can be a matter of preference, as plenty of Amarone age very well. But in my experience, as a wine ages and cellars it gains textural smoothness and sometimes higher alcohols combine with this to feel less balanced. Or maybe I just feel that lower abv wines retain elegance in the cellar. Plenty of people enjoy bigger wines though so YMMV.

Less is more-given my first two items in this list, this probably isn’t a surprise. But many wines put on weight, especially Nebbiolo and Pinot Noir, and fruit can be tied up by tannin chains in youth to be released as the chains polymerize and evolve/drop out. But the “another sh**ty 07 Oregon Pinot Noir” thread is really worth a read.

Whole cluster-stems generally lead to higher tannin, less fruit, lower alcohol. The wines rarely show in youth, so tasting them and comparing them to destemmed wines the whole cluster wines usually look less like great wines. But my experience is that with 15-25 years they often have an extra gear, though personal preference is always a factor and plenty of great destemmed wines can be profound. But it’s unlikely that whole cluster wines will be oxidized in 10-15 years.

VOTC-some of the most hyped vintages are by no means the vintages that will cellar exceptionally. 2002 Piedmont, IMO, is not as good as 2001 or 1999. On the other hand some are. Every 1994 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir I have had in the last 2-3 years has been everything the vintage was promised to be.

Bottle bouquet-I find older wines often need 20-30 minutes to shed some funky smells. Even 25-30 year old wines. Sometimes this feels like the wines are tired (worrisome) and then 30 minutes in the wine is magical. No real comments to why, but it does happen.

Sulfur-d’Auvenay may be the real deal, and there are low/no sulfur wines that definitely age well (Nikolaihof). But my hit rate is intolerable as far as cellaring and aging anything sans soufre. I would certainly guess Allemand would be good, and many enjoy Metras and Lapierre as well. YMMV but in my opinion caveat emptor reigns in this category.

The Dumb Phase-definitely a thing. But as to when…like obcenity, you’ll know it when you see it.

And as Charlie Fu says, “producer, producer, producer.

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