Anyone remember the phrase “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” from a freshman bio class? I thought about that tonight as Steve and I discussed over dinner what happens to an open bottle of wine over the course of a few days. Our general impression is that once a red wine has opened up, whether that process took two minutes or two days, further exposure to air will create raisiny notes that we both dislike. We’ve always attributed that to oxidation.
We’ve both noticed several TNs in which the writers see development over hours or days as a window into evolution over X years. I don’t get this. Isn’t aging basically an anerobic process, whereas “opening up” is aerobic? Whatever the chemistry (and I hope those in the know will clue us in) our experience is that “aging does not recapitulate breathing”.
We’ve both noticed several TNs in which the writers see development over hours or days as a window into evolution over X years. I don’t get this.
Definitely agree with that they are totally different, I don’t get it either. In my experience, I’ve found the people I personally know who contend that one is equivalent to the other don’t really have any or any material experience with aged wines to be able, in my opinion, to form a credible opinion on the matter.
Strictly speaking, probably not.
One of several definitions of “anerobic”: Living conditions in which there is an absence of oxygen.
Aging wine is reported to be a low oxygen environment, i.e., before it becomes vinegar.
People who study metabolism use terms like microaerobic (or less likely, dysaerobic) when discussing similar conditions. I’ll leave the rest to the wine pros.
I think it’s a normal process of projection done by the human mind, it seems “natural” to link these two things. Having tasted wines on day 2 or 3 for years I am still undecided - on the one hand there doesn’t seem to be, on average, a real link between the two, but on the other hand with certain wines that suddenly come to life on day 3 (and yes that really happened) it’s hard not to do this kind of projection and infer that the wine indeed needs more time. Which is why in the end I think this can be a decent way to see if a wine “needs more time”, but not sure that it really shows if a wine “will improve”…
I’ve actually noticed more of the opposite assertion - eg, this wine was good on Day 1 and Day 2 but fell apart on Day 3, therefore drink up. But I think your conclusion is more supportable.
I think the whole idea of sampling the wine over the course of many days is nuts. There’s just no science to support it.
Now, I do think that the rate of oxidation can give you some clues about how long the wine will age, and the optimal drinking window.
I like decanting wine to get rid of the sediment, and maybe an hour of air to get rid of any off smells, but that’s it.
Melissa, let me approach this from a different angle. I think emulating aging by decanting is a falsehood. Decanting wines for a few hours may open them up and make them more enjoyable. I know this because I open decant almost every wine (Cab, Blend & Syrah) I have enjoyed for at least an hour. When CLONYC hosted Thomas Rivers Brown a few months back I had full input from Thomas for decanting. The Dinner was scheduled for 6:30 and 15 of the 19 wines had decant times ranging from 8.5 hours to 2.5 hours. All of the Cabs were from the 2006 vintage and all of the pinots were from the 2007 vintage. 90% of the cabs were decanted and 70% of the pinots.
What was the goal? Open them up to let them show their best at this point in time. Period.
I am sure he was not seeking the reproduce age in those wines. They always seemed young when drinking and never once in my life could I imagine wanting to hyper-age my wines. Anyone who knows me knows I am no big fan of 'old’ wines. There is a common mis-belief that young wines can not be as enjoyable than old, or to put another way, old wines are better. I think for some wines this may be the case. At least in the wines I enjoy, not.,( Unless 3-7 years are considered old). And isn’t that what it’s really all about?
Decanting for 2-3 days is crazy. 1-6 hours should suffice.
When the Polyprotic Acid goes Stoichiometry and reach a Bonding Orbital through Gay-Lussac’s Law and then go aerobic we have delicious wine……Know what? I will leave the chemistry to the chemists.
I’m with Peter … I don’t dig drinking a wine over many days. Occasionally a bottle will go into a second day and even more rarely beyond that. But I find that in almost every situation it is worse after the first day.
It’s a good point, Melissa, that just keeping a wine open doesn’t allow you to accurately simulate aging. It may give a view into how much structure and stuffing is in a wine, which may allow you to draw some inferences about how a wine might age over time.
The only way to do it is actually age it … or get one of those really awesome magnet things you can dip into the wine that will age it one year for each second it remains in the wine. (I am not making this up … someone demonstrated it to me a few years ago, and it was the biggest load of BS I’d ever witnessed in my whole life.)
I think my conclusion is also due to the fact that I tend to see the glass as half full.
The scenario is this: I have a bottle of this wine left. It’s not going anywhere. I will drink it eventually. If the wine is not showing well today, the “glass half full” view is “let’s wait some more and cross our fingers”.
Therefore if a wine seems closed and eventually opens up, I’m more likely to infer that it needs more time, just because it suits my expectations - I want the wine to be good. And since I know it’s not enjoyable now and I can’t go back in the past, it’s better to self-suggest that the wine will improve
When I first saw the title, “Breathing v. Aging”, I thought “This is simple. When you stop Breathing, you stop Aging!” [d_sunny.gif]
A long time ago (25-30 years) I was a member of a group call Les Amis du Vin that was promoting good wine in America. In their magazine there was an article that gave a specific relationship between breathing and aging. IIRC it was 20 minutes per year. That is, if a new wine peaked after 2 hours of breathing, it would peak after 6 years of aging. I think there was an exception for Bordeaux of 40 minutes instead of 20. It all seemed pretty silly, but still thought provoking.
I do think it indicates something, basically how resistant the wine is to oxidation. But the main reason I like to drink a young wine over several days is that if you drink it all the first day, you don’t know what else it might do. Does it have a higher peak you don’t know about?
It’s a little like someone said about democracy, it’s a terrible system but it’s the best we have.
I agree with you here on this. As with many of the posts here.
I don’t see the point in these super long decants. Unless you prefer to drink oxidized wine, why do it? I usually pop and pour and watch the wine evolve.
if a wine can stay open for 3 days before oxidizing (I am highly skeptical of such reports) that does not mean that the wine will age. All it means is that the wine can remain open for three days without oxidizing.
Let me add that one of the biggest misconceptions I see on these BB’s is that tannins in a wine equal agability. This is not true. What makes a wine agable is, among other things, the balance of the tannins, not the presence of tannins.
Sure, aeration can soften tannins and make a wine resistant to oxidation. But that doesn’t predict much of anything. if the fruit is fading, such a wine should be drunk up regardless of the amount of tannins present.
I store it with a vacuvin and put it in the fridge and 90% of the time it never tastes as good as it did on the first day, so I’m right there with you.
As to Melissa original post, I agree. I see absolutly no correlation between ageing a wine and having one open for a couple of days. Having it open is (for the most part) not a precurser to what that wine would be like if it were aged for x amount of years.
Same here. If a wine I open remains unfinished by the end of the lunch or dinner or whatever (since these wine meals last several hours), that means to me I and the others with me didn’t really like it. In such cases, I just leave them at the restaurant or, if at home, it is used for cooking - assuming the staff doesn’t wind up drinking it.
That said, I’ve tried, in the past, re-tasting a handful of wines the next day in hope that they’d be better. None of them improved for me.
You know it… especially when your name came up. When I mentioned “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”, my next comment was “I bet Todd doesn’t know any of those words!”
And Noel… it would be an honor to drink your restaurant leftovers.
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