Wondering in general and with Vin Santo in particular.
As the resident sweet tooth (thought Tawny Port and Madeira experts may have more knowledgeable thoughts to chime in with), it is my experience that the three most common oxidized dessert wines – those being Tawny Port, Vin Santo, Madeira and Vin de Paille – simply do not change much if at all once bottled.
It takes years, decades really, for a non-oxidized wine to change in bottle. Those changes have already happened at an accelerated rate in the barrel for oxidized dessert wines and any variations that occur in the bottle, if any, IMHO would not even be noticeable compared to what has already happened in barrel and you wouldn’t notice a difference in taste if you let it age.
I once had a Graham’s 20 YO Tawny Port that was bottled in 1999 and compared it to another bottled in 2011 and honestly I couldn’t tell the difference. Both bottles were well-kept and while logic dictates that the 11 bottle should’ve tasted “fresher” there was honestly no variation that my palate could detect at the time.
Now all this said, it’s time for other more expert palates to check in here as well. Paging Roy and Andy…
Vin santo and vin de paille are quite different from Port and Madeira, and aren’t normally oxidized. The former are made from raisined grapes, but the wine in most cases isn’t exposed to a lot of oxygen. I’ve had a couple of very old vin de paille that were quite ethereal, unlike anything young. I don’t have any experience with significantly aged vin santo, but somehow I doubt it changes. Ice wine is like that, too. It doesn’t usually go anywhere. Botrytised wines do evolve, they.
What John said. An oxidized wine will change less than a non-oxidized wine and then there are fortified wines. So take something like a sweetened sherry or a Madeira - those will obtain a lot of their interest from the oxidation. Something from Rivesaltes, Banyuls, or Maury will also obtain a lot of interest from oxidation but that’s a little different since it comes from long barrel aging, although sometimes in barrels that aren’t topped off.
On the other hand, a vin doux naturel that is from Muscat is trying to preserve that Muscat flavor and aroma. Sauternes and Tokaji-aszu are botrytized and they’re trying to preserve the freshness of the fruit and the complex flavors, so they’re not oxidized. All of those change significantly in the bottle.
The wines from dried grapes are different again and as John points out, the point of drying is to concentrate the sugars but the wines aren’t usually deliberately oxidized.
As far as a twenty year tawny goes, that’s already a lot of time and the rate of change decreases as the years go by. The issue with those is that the desired changes have taken place in the barrel, so like the sherries, there’s not really a lot of expected change once bottled.
I wasn’t even thinking about the fortification with Port and Madeira. Duh!
Greg – Why is that some unoxidized fortified wines like vintage Port age while others, like Muscat de Beaumes de Venise (so far as I know) don’t really? I assumed that the fortification retards development, but it obviously doesn’t preclude it, as vintage Port shows.
Tawny Port will change, and can change substantially, over many years in bottle. Most producers don’t make their Tawny’s to withstand long bottle aging. Generally speaking, as a result most Tawny’s will start losing their freshness and become cloying after a number of years in bottle. Often they will get a cloudiness from a super fine sediment that never completely settles out. That is why most Tawny’s are best within a handful of years after bottling. That can be less, around the 2-3 year mark, for Tawny’s with an indication of age (10,20,30,40 year old), basic Tawny’s, or Reserve Tawny’s. That is not to say they won’t last longer, as I’ve had Tawny’s bottled 50+ years ago which were still quite nice. Those are the rare exception however. But as a general rule of thumb, those time frames are a good guideline to ensure you enjoy them at their best.
On the flip side…Some companies, such as Niepoort, produce a Tawny with the goal of allowing it to continue to get a little better with age in bottle. In reality, it may not get better but it will change into something slightly different than what was bottled without losing the freshness and perceived acidity. A great example is the 1900 Niepoort Colheita, which were bottled between 1972 and 1977. They are fantastic still to this day and you would never guess they’ve been in bottle around 40 years.
So despite what some others have mentioned, Tawny Ports do change and often not for the better.
Greg, how long should you hold an Azsu? What characteristics will time give it?
Madeira can and does change in glass, either demijohn or bottle. I recently had the opportunity to try a Boal that was 18 years in cask and over 120 years in glass. It had a very delicate and ethreal quality to it relative to other Madieras which are aged predominately in cask. That said, any changes occur at a snail’s pace.
Glass aged Madeira used to be a strictly American thing. At the turn of the 20th century, most of the great collections were in glass.
We had a Madeira from 1907 a couple weeks ago. But it was bottled much later than that. First time we tasted that bottle however, was almost a year ago. It hasn’t changed a hell of a lot in spite of being opened for a long time.
John - good question about the aging. I think some of it has to do with the grapes. Port grapes are really tannic and tannins helps prevent oxidation while the wine evolves in the bottle. In that way I guess it’s a little like Bordeaux or Barolo. The way Port is made, by pouring brandy into what is almost juice, probably helps too. The tannins never get racked off so they’re always there.
In addition, the extra alcohol, while not necessarily preventing oxidiation, acts as a preservative against spoilage organisms. So maybe you can get the wine to evolve because there’s some built-in protection?
That’s just guesswork though, because I really never looked into any science regarding this. Banyuls and Maury can age just like vintage Ports, even though they’re from Grenache. Somehow there are a lot of tannins in those wines, particularly when young so I’m assuming that’s got something to do with it.
Even so however, I’m not completely certain that Muscat de Beaumes de Venise doesn’t really age. In fact, I have some from the early 1980s and it’s changing, albeit extremely slowly. I have about six or seven bottles left and had I been smarter about it, I wouldn’t have packed them all up and I’d share one with you. As of now, they’re all sitting in a warehouse waiting for shipment to CA. Sorry.
Paul - regarding aszú that’s another really good question. They can age for a long time, that much we know. But it’s a little more complicated than that.
You can still find some old ones going way back. Those have usually turned brown and have notes of caramel and toffee. If you’re lucky, they’ve retained acidity and they have an amazing liveliness that you just don’t get with anything else - they’re not fortified and they also aren’t kind of concentrated from long barrel aging so they don’t get that syrupy quality you can get from tawny Ports.
But 50 years of communism really messed up wine making and it’s really hard to say these days. Even before WW2, Hungary was having really hard times and the wine making wasn’t necessarily top notch in all cases. So a lot of people assume that the “traditional” style was always oxidized a little bit anyway, and that’s a style still followed by producers like Royal Tokaj today. Other people think that the oxidation was just a mistake all along and those producers are making clearer, cleaner, completely non-oxidized wines. That would include guys like Szepsy and most of the new, small producers, as well as a few of the large ones like Oremus.
In theory, the wine should age for many many years. People age things like Sauternes and German sweet wines and if you like them aged, they should be fine.
But then you have another variable that I’ve been encountering a lot unfortunately. That’s the problem of premature oxidiation. The Furmint grape itself seems somehow to be prone to it, although I need to do some research on that. But starting from the blocks in 1990 without any real benchmarks other than the old stuff, I think the producers weren’t completely certain. So I’ve had a few wines from say 1993 and 1999 that are browner than they should be, which is kind of distressing. That was an issue with the wines of Kiralyudvar for example, which is partly why you could find some of them on closeout a few years ago.
So it’s an open question for the moment. People have learned a lot in the past 25 years and the wines are ever-better, so I don’t know that we can even extrapolate too much from 20 years ago. Ideally, you would get gradual ambering and development of some toffee but you wouldn’t lose the super high acidity that keeps the wines light. Some of the beeswax and honey notes would remain, but they’d be complimented by the maturing aromas and flavors that emerge.
If you’ve had older Sauternes, it would be something along those lines but with greater acidity and more vibrancy. That’s what has been happening to the best I’ve had over the past 20 years and some of those seem like they’re going to outlast me by far.
I guess it’s a question of what you prefer. When it comes to moderately sweet German wines, I prefer them quite young. I’m kind of inclined to feel the same way about Tokaji-aszú but I’m also curious to see what happens, and as I happen to have a number of them, I guess I will.
Sorry for the thread drift! ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
I hope we have a chance to sample one of those on one coast or the other, Greg.
I’ll keep a couple for that purpose!
Greg - Thanks for the great response.