Dumb question - determining life span of a wine...

WINE TALK
1

How can you tell if a wine has peaked or is just starting to get its groove on?

I popped a 2005 Windy Oaks Estate Diane’s Block Pinot Noir for the first time in a year. I gave it an hour or 2 of air, and then poured when Thanksgiving dinner was ready.

This wine made my toes curl. [give_heart.gif] My mother actually gave me a look when i said “damn, just damn!” In fact, she drank every last drop in her glass and she is not really a wine drinker.

I saved a little for Day #2, and found it just as good if not better! I killed a lot of these when they were a baby. [oops.gif]

Can I get some tips/advice on determining if a wine has reached its peak? I don’t want to kill this last bottle [cry.gif]

[thankyou.gif]

2

Les,

This is hardly a dumb question at all. We all struggle with finding a wine’s peak, and the very idea of peak is subjective anyway.

Some of my quick ideas and guidelines:

  1. Track record. Find out if experienced tasters have had an opportunity to try the wine in question at an older age. Yes, wine varies from year to year, and it should. But a consistent producer will offer wines with similar makeup, and if you trust someone who has tried older vintages, there’s a start.

  2. Tannins. Your own perception of a wine’s tannins will tell you the basics of potential structure and aging. A tannic beast, gripping and re-gripping like Sergio Garcia, probably could stand some years laying down.

  3. Building your own track record. If you buy multiple bottles, set a kind of schedule and keep notes about how the wine is progressing. You’ll see the changes.

  4. Lack of fear. If I let a bottle go too long, I’m fine with it. Not everyone feels this way, but I love the story a wine has to tell as it matures. Eventually it gets tired, and in those occasions I find myself a bit frustrated that I allowed a nice bottle to regress, but that happens. And it’s likely to still be drinkable. So experiment and see what happens, but keep your eyes open. As much as people will tell you that a wine is “94 points,” or a “drink now,” or even offering tasting windows spanning 20 years, wine is unpredictable. That’s part of the beauty.

Cheers, and happy drinking.

3

Buy a case. Enjoy 2 bottles per year. Rinse and repeat with each vintage.

Cheers.

4

Les – I think it’s a combination of experience with the wine type and the balance of the wine.

If the wine tastes as good as what you described, why wait? Particularly if it’s a New World pinot. It’s probably at its moment.

If you have enough experience tasting wines over their lives, and tasting different types of wine, you can get a rough sense simply from the taste. If it’s got some age but seems too tannic for the fruit (think 1994 or 1999 in Bordeaux), maybe it just isn’t going to get any better. If it’s massively tannic but it’s a 2005 Bordeaux, you may be in for a real treat – when you’re grandchildren are adults. But you need to know the type. Barolo can be brutally tannic for a decade or two. Unless you know that, it would be easy to dismiss a lot of the best wines if you drank them early in their lives.

5

Les – I think it’s a combination of experience with the wine type and the balance of the wine.

If the wine tastes as good as what you described, why wait? Particularly if it’s a New World pinot. It’s probably at its moment.

If you have enough experience tasting wines over their lives, and tasting different types of wine, you can get a rough sense simply from the taste. If it’s got some age but seems too tannic for the fruit (think 1994 or 1999 in Bordeaux), maybe it just isn’t going to get any better. If it’s massively tannic but it’s a 2005 Bordeaux, you may be in for a real treat – when you’re grandchildren are adults. But you need to know the type. Barolo, for instance, tends to be brutally tannic for a decade or two. Unless you know that and factor it in, it would be easy to dismiss a lot of the best wines if you drank them early in their lives.

6

Jancis Robinson authored a book about 20 years ago called Vintage Timecharts or such. She tried to do this for many of the bigger named wines. No help for your particular wine.

7

I agree with John. Some wines change and evolve as they age… some people like those characteristics better than the more fruit driven flavors of young wine… some people are the reverse. And some like both.

To me a wine’s entering maturity when the flavors are starting to change from fruit dominant to secondary flavors. What those are varies from wine to wine. There can be a time when the fruit is fading and the secondary flavors aren’t prominent too. I’ve really decided that I like Burgundy and Barolo young or at ~15 years old… sadly.

I remember reading a rule of thumb that wines stay on the mature plateau for about as long as it took them to get there, but that seams optimistic to me. If a wine took 15 years to hit maturity I’d tend to drink it up over the next 7-8 years.

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Les,

given the subject,

no such thing as a dumb question.

9

I’m with Terence on this one. In my case, I try to revisit a wine I’m interested in every six months or once a year depending on whether or not if I think it is very near full stride.

N

10

Buy a case and enjoy 2 bottles every year. [scratch.gif]

Let me see 12/2 = 6.

So you believe in letting a wine get an entire 6 years old. [tease.gif]

Probably about right for many of the drink now cabs and pinots out of CA. But what about the rest of the world?

11

Thanks for the feedback.

I had a friend, who is more experienced in wines, tell me it wouldn’t get any better than now. He recently cracked open an 05 too.

What threw me off was Day #2 tasting better than Day #1. So in my newbie brain, if it lasted 2 days (day #3 didnt stand a chance of happening), then maybe it could go longer? [scratch.gif]

12

There’s not a universal answer. Some wines show their best from ages 1-5. Some aren’t close to their potential until 15. And then you have to factor in what YOU like. Your friend who said ‘it wont’ get better than this’ might be right for THEIR palate and with THAT wine - it’s not a universal.

Personally I can’t see spending much more than $30 or $40 for a wine that is only good young and On the flip side I can’t see spending $100 on a wine with aging potential and then opening it at age 4 (aside from a test before letting a case age). There are too many wines for < $40 that taste great young to me that I don’t see it. But that’s part of the fun of wine - try a lot of things, old, young, middle aged from a lot or places. Don’t pay attention to people who tell you their way is the only way.

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determining life span of a wine…

It’s easy, when bottles being opened show marked and consistent decline, you have determined the life span of that wine. If however, you are seeking to know how to PRE determine the life span of a wine well, that’s very different. Like sports events or markets, all that can be done is make educated guesses. There are many variables, the more experience you have the better the guesses will be. Most fine wines
last longer than they are often given credit for if conditions are right.

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