Oh, for crying out loud, this is an article in the food section of the Washington Post. It is not for wine geeks. It is for people who drink wine and have heard that wine can be stored for a long time. He goes through what everybody who already collects and stores wine knows, but he isn’t writing for them. As for wine being a living thing, you know what he means by that, comparing wine to the life stages of human beings or to stereotypes of masculine and feminine characteristics goes on here all the time and hardly should raise this objection. This is like a physicist objecting to a journalist’s description of quantum mechanics. If that is your reaction, don’t read about your hobby in newspapers.