I was lucky to try some aged wines in my early wine biz days 1985-90. 71 de Montille burgs at 15 years old, Cali Cabs from the 1970s, 1970 Bordeaux that were not ready, '47, '55, '59 and '62 Bordeaux that were transcendent…all while trying their current releases for comparison.
Overall, I think wines with age are better integrated, with decreased tannins leading to a more rounded texture. Young wines might be more “complex” on the nose or palate, but they are fleeting. Aged wines to me are about depth and persistence of that complexity.
But certainly not all.
I had an '85 de Montille Bourgogne that was just tight and acidic, maybe 83 points. Aged it 15 years and it just started it’s drinking window, like a mini Volnay and absolutely lovely at 90+. Other wines would be past it at 15 years. Producer indeed.
For us, we age Cali Cab 10 years and then start drinking, Same with Burgs. Bordeaux I’d age 20 years (and buy producers accordingly). Lastly, Sauternes…buy good ones and they will improve and outlast you and your children and possibly grand children. Start drinking at 20 years of age.
They don’t make the Riservas in weaker vintages, so there shouldn’t be such wines - only bottles with questionable provenance.
But indeed, a 20-yo Produttori Riserva definitely shouldn’t feel “depleted”, tired, oxidative, any of that. I hope my trio of Produttori Riserva verticals going back to the very first vintages ever made (1961) are a testament to that.
I had this experience with a 2013 Marchesi Grey Riserva Barbaresco just yesterday. Fruit was completely dulled and the nose was incredibly tight; offering up nothing. Given my last experience with the wine 2 years ago (which i loved), I will lay down my remaining bottles for at least 3-5+ years to see if we are on the other side of the phase.
The tasting was organized by a retailer who buys the wine directly from the winery. My hunch is poor storage. The reaction of the group was interesting, however. 2/3 felt the wines were exhausted while 1/3 felt they were still good. As mentioned above, other crus I’ve had that are over 20 years old have been fantastic.
Poor storage indeed. All the Crus are made identically, so Asili shouldn’t be more susceptible to falling apart than any other Cru.
And of course there are differences in preferences. Yesterday we had a 2004 Casanova di Neri Cerretalto, which felt somewhat tired and oxidative to basically all the attendees in the tasting - except for one, to whom it was among the top 3 wines in the tasting.
Right now, I think your first step is to find out whether you like aged wines. I am not sure you do. I don’t really know if what you are tasting in aged wines is really wines that are oxidized or that do not taste like their grape variety anymore or whatever. Yes, the wines you are tasting could be oxidized or it could be that what you are tasting is the way mature wines are supposed to taste and you just don’t like it - at least not now (our tastes change over time.
I recommend getting more methodical in your approach. This can be done in a couple of ways.
You like Cabernet Sauvignon. At least one very top California wines without outstanding wines that have long had a wonderful reputation for aging is Mount Eden. The winery sells older wines as well as newly released wines on their website. StoreFront – Mount Eden Vineyards Online Store Get a bottle of a newly released wine, one five years older, 10 years older, etc., and drink them. Learn how a wine matures that has a wonderful track record for aging. Notice how they can go from wide open and full of fruit, then over time shut down and seem to go over the hill only to re-emerge with wonderful balance and new flavors. Do these new flavors mean for you that the wine no longer tastes like Cabernet or do they mean they taste like Cabernet is supposed to taste - only you can answer that for you.
You can do the same thing with Bordeaux, but you will have to search wine search to find the older vintages. See what you find in your price range and come back to the board with suggestions of wines you might want to do this with. Some Bordeauxs age extremely well. Others that have experimented with more modern techniques can fall apart with age.
One wine I have some experience with that you have tasted is Vajra Albe. You are correct that it is nice young and does not “need” age. But, IMHO the wine benefits from age. If you think people age wines because they need age you likely will not like aged wines. People age wines because they think good wines get better with age. You may or may not think so. Albe is a pretty well priced wine that does well with age. Either again find this wine with age and do what I suggested with Mount Eden or buy a case and drink a bottle every year (you will learn a lot but it will take 12 years).
You also might find it interesting to buy some of the single vineyard wines from Vajra. Compare these wine (rich and with more tannin) to the Albe.
A somewhat comparably priced wine to the Albe (also from Nebbiolo) is Produttori del Barbaresco. It might be easier to set up a vertical of Produttori as there are stores that have older (much older) vintages of the wines. produttori del barbaresco - Chambers Street Wines I had a couple of bottles of their wines from the 1970s a few months ago and they were fabulous. Will you like them? Don’t know. Only one way for you to find out. Again, I recommend getting several bottles - one each from a range of vintages to see how the wine changes and develops.
One more comment about something to be wary of. The biggest issue with drinking aged wine is finding wine that has been properly stored. Too many people think they do not like aged wine because the wines they buy on auction or whatever ARE oxidized. In too many cases, the issue is not the wine itself but how the wine has been stored. Be very careful about the stores where you purchase aged wines. I recommended a winery and a store that has a long reputation for storing wines well. It is not unusual to see reviews on CellarTracker about a wine being over the hill where I recently had the same wine and it was wonderful. Could be different tastes in wine, but in many cases it is storage.
And, if you want to start aging wine yourself, make sure you have a good place to store the wine. Keep it cool (cool basement not above a stove or next to a furnace), keep it dark (not in the kitchen where you can show it off), keep it away from vibrations and store the wines on their sides.
Alcohol trickier, though personally I’m in pretty much the same space. Other intriguing data points include Port and other fortifieds (the added alcohol helping to preserve?), plus dessert wines, which can have supreme longevity yet extreme potential alcohol. In those cases I think we come back to acidity as being even more vital.
Did you mean 2002 for Piedmont? I don’t think anyone praised it beyond the likes of ‘some surprisingly drinkable, where careful selection was made’, hence I assume a typo?
Getting to know a producer helps a lot, though it’s also important to observe big changes in their growing and wine making e.g. Aldo Conterno. That can throw good solid historic data out of the window.
Funny people should mention Produttori. I tried the 2009 Paje a couple weeks ago and it was oxidized. Even more specifically, on day one it had an oxidated nose, much more so than on the pallet - I best describe it as redolent of vinegar, bruised fruits, and caramelized apple.
On day 2, that oxidized quality increased much more in terms of the taste of the wine itself.
This is why I considered the wine to be oxidized. When the oxygen really hit it after the bottle was opened, those negative qualities greatly accelerated.
It was much much different than with a properly aged Barolo or Barbaresco in which day 2 can provide an interesting contrast to day 1, and the wine can show differently and in a nice way.
Now, possible explanations are that one Berserker said 2009 is not a good vintage for aging with Barbarescos, and a second is I bought the wine a week earlier in auction.
I’ve a feeling that whilst the crus get the same treatment as each other, it’s not the same treatment as 1960s / 1970s, and I recall the winemaker saying he thinks they are at best 12-15 years after vintage, so I wonder whether that mindset influences his approach.
To the OP’s question though. Every bottle is different. I like middle aged wine, tend to drink what I drink at between 15 and 30 years of age. Used to like many older, but those wines are now too old and the wines that are now at that age are simply not the same wines.
Everything has changed, viticulture, winemaking, even shipping, and of course my palate.
I think part of this game, or at least winning at this game, is to have factored in a fair degree of misses. You won’t get every bottle at or near peak, but that is ok. Look for the beauty in each.
As far as cellartracker goes, which I use and love, it can be almost useless in determining when a wine is ready to drink. One man’s at peak, is another’s past peak, and then there is whole lack of understanding of the life cycle of a bottle wine so the death certificates issued around age 10-15 are just misinformation. Of course once you find the few palates that align with yours it open a whole new level of utility there.
I think the point is that we too often look for definitive and precise judgements, starting with the 100 point scale and leading to the ideal time to drink a bottle of wine when those simply don’t really exist. I have always said that a bottle of wine is like a film, but we only get to see a handful of frames with each bottle enjoyed. Sometimes we can enjoy the story from that snippet, other times it leaves us questioning or confused. Best just to enjoy what there is to enjoy.
From what I’ve understood from my visit to Produttori, they’ve just updated their equipment, whereas the winemaking process itself is still more or less similar to what they did 60 years ago. Of course there might’ve been some minor adjustments, but the main lines are pretty much unchanged.
However, most likely the viticulture that the co-op members do must’ve changed a lot since. I’m quite sure that has more of an impact to how the wines express themselves. And not to mention how the climate has changed since the 1960’s or 70’s.
My corollary to this is when a wine shows really well, I start drinking it frequently until it doesn’t, I run out, or something else in the cellar catches my eye.
This is where I’ve ended up. I’ve had some really spectacular older wines but I’ve discovered that what I really crave is that point where a wine becomes unbound from its youthful structure while still maintaining fruit and floral notes while adding some savory nuance. I don’t like balsamic or soy notes in red wines, petrol in whites, but the truffle notes in Champagne are the absolute worst. I’m beginning to think it’s really just some Bordeaux that I really like with significant age.
Thanks for that picture which shows it was imported by Vias and the cork. It really helps contextualize your experience. Vias is the official importer and the cork looks pretty good, not obviously heat damaged. 2009 is not a particularly great vintage and some Barbaresco may be over the hill. Something that is impossible to spot from the outside is what I’ll call “low key” provenance issues. Was this in a retail store on a shelf for a few years? Was it delivered to the store in a non-refrigerated truck in the summer? How was it really shipped across the ocean (did it sit in a container at port for weeks, etc.)? Sometimes there won’t be obvious signs that a wine has been damaged (even if not perfect, that cork is pretty decent) and I don’t really know what to do about that.
Yup, and some particular Barolo, but otherwise we are on the same page. And I’m not sure that more recent vintages of Bordeaux will deliver the experience we have come to expect from ancient Bordeaux anyway.
I think we have lived through a golden intersection of traditional wines in need of much age, and modern interpretations that deliver more of their potential in their relative youth.
2009 was a warm year, so I’d guess that the factors Marcus mentioned (e.g., lower acid) might be at work. And auction sourcing at this age is always a risk.
