+1
Can’t see how you synthesized that from the comments in this thread.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a wine taste better to me on the second day.
I agree with you guys. It happens, but it is rare that I like a wine better after being open a day or more.
I must be drinking a lot of my wines too young. But it takes me three days for a bottle unless we have a dinner party, and I like them to last that long. I did just drink an '04 PN that only lasted 2 days.
So I used it to flesh out some NV Ocean Spray Cranberry. ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
I don’t often find wines that are legitimately better after a day. However, many wines are different the next day, and that can be interesting in itself.
Oh, and just for the record I find that sangiovese, young or old, almost always benefits from a few hours of air but will almost always fall apart overnight.
Most of the wines I have had are better the first day than they are the second day - esp. reds and Chardonnay. The only type of wine where I have found it not unusual for the wine to taste better the second day is, as Jay said, young German Riesling, esp. wines with some residual sugar.
Vibrant young fruit won’t usually be “better” the next day…I certainly think that.
But…“vibrant young fruit” is not what I’m usually looking for at any point. That’s why it’s important to understand lots of factors in responding to this thread, including the age of the wine and the amount of aeration on day 1. Oxygen tranforms “bright young fruit” whether its the slow process of long bottle aging or the fast process of open aeration. I’m looking for that “transformed” fruit, which is why I often find wines better with aeration…on day one or two or three.
That’s really well put, and helps me to understand the oddly disparate responses above to the OP’s question.
Thanks, Katrina. I’ve been struggling to understand how to process this thread, so I took a shot at why. I think people are talking about different goals here…with different “raw material”. And, unless we’re talking about the same goals/methods/age and type of wines we’re aging, we’re all talking about different things. Too many variables.
Hallelujuh! Someone actually differentiated among different kinds of wines and said if they refrigerated the wines or not.
Thank you, Katrina!
Young Loire Chenin and German Rieslings have shown better on day 2 for me also.
Since my wife can only drink white wine now, I poured us both a glass of the Argot Estate Chardonnay for Pasta and Salmon that had been open for a week and it was excellent. Essentially the same as when I tasted with Justin Harmon last week. Failla, Easkoot and Morgado are actually getting better with the same regimen.
Leftovers from a tasting of red Loires Wednesday, retasted yesterday and today, after the remains were refrigerated. There was ~40% of each bottle left. A little empirical evidence for this thread:
2012 Dom de la Chantaleuserie - Bourgueil: Somewhat strange on day 1. Earth, moderately tannic with a somewhat strange spicy note; maybe an odd flower. “Weirdly spicy” I wrote. Day 3 it was just too weird; like one of those cut flowers that stinks up a room. Not a bad or flawed wine. Just weird.
2012 Raffault - Chinon - Les Picasses: I gave this 90 originally for potential, but was nicer on retasting – the fruit fleshed out. In fact, at points in the retasting I liked it better than the 02.
2002 Raffault -Les Picasses: Pretty tough initially but, like the 2012, this really fleshed out and became better and better on day 2 and 3. 90 initially for potential. Now it earns an extra point for potential realized. Rocking.
1998 Breton - Chinon - Beaumont: “Fairly tannic but gorgeous” I wrote on day 1. This was very good on retasting but no better and maybe a tad less fruity.
1993 Raffault - Les Picasses: Singing on day 1. Maturing but with a lot of structure. “Like a cross of claret and nebbiolo” I wrote to describe the aromas and the structure. I gave it 93. This did not fare well on retasting though, showing marked oxidation after two days in the fridge.
The other wines – 2012 Breton -Bourgeuil -Les Gallichets and 2012 Baudry - Chinon - Les Grezeaux didn’t change much. 87 and 85, respectively.
Sadly, a 1996 Joguet - Chinon - Clos de la Dioterie was corked. We could tell it was a really lovely wine behind the taint. A pity.
Did you let them get back to room temp before tasting them, John?
I almost never refrigerate any wines that are opened…I’m trying to see what oxgyen does for them/to them. Preserving them by refrigerating them and seeing how oxygen makes them develop seem competing goals to me. Then it takes forever to warm them up so they can be tasted.
Curious what you did/do…
Stuart - Yes, I took them out of the refrigerator ahead.
It’s not just the impact of oxygen that changes the wine when it’s open. It’s also the aromas that slowly come out of solution, giving you a richer bouquet. That is separate from oxidation, although refrigeration will slow down each process.
With many wines, too much exposure to air at room temperature will result in the aromas just blowing off instead of unfolding. I find that is very common, so I never leave things out at room temperature, particularly since I’m in a NYC apartment, which tends to be over 75 all year round. (I find at wineries, restaurants and wine bars, it’s usually easy to detect a bottle that’s been open a day or two. Either they’re kind of dead, with no aroma, or they’re oxidized.)
With older wines, oxidation is a real risk if you leave them out, as the 93 Raffault here illustrates. I’d guess that would have been undrinkable if I’d left it out. Oxidation can also be a problem with some current release wines like grenache that are prone to oxidation. Even refrigerated, some wines are oxidized on day 2.
Moreover, if there’s a bit of VA, leaving the wine out at room temperature can really accelerate the growth of that.
As I’ve said here many times before, I’ve hosted tastings for several decades and I’ve found that refrigerating the leftovers and retasting a day or two later often shows some real evolution in the wine without the risk of oxidation or VA or total loss of aromas. So that’s my system and I’m sticking to it.
It doesn’t mean some wines won’t hold up at room temperature and improve, but the odds of the wine going south on you increase markedly at room temperature in my experience.
Thanks, John. Just wanted to make sure that they are back to room temp when you evaluate them. Bern’s in Tampa, IMO, preserves wines in their near- refrigerator temps. Makes it difficult to taste their wines, as it takes forever to have them come up to room temp. (I often have the same issue at home…saving a wine to taste and having it too cold to appreciate in time.) That’s the reason, more than anything, I don’t refrigerate for the next day. For the same reason, I always try to have Berns’ wines…out of their cellars for a day or so…though not opened.
Lots of tradeoffs here, in addition to the variables discussed on this thread.
I look at refrigerating as a braking mechanism to evolution. I do use it for that…especially when I open a wine to aerate while I’m at the office…and want the evolution to be a little more controlled than just leaving it in decanter in my kitchen.
Bingo! I think this might be the main point. Reframed:
“Is it worth it to try a bottle over several days?”
“Yes, not because it will definitely improve, but because it’s educational or at least interesting. The wine won’t necessarily improve, but even then it might be just as good in a different way, and you’ve learned about how that wine reacts to oxygen. Some people [me] believe that often the wine will get better, especially a powerful red that shows closed on Day One.”
For me personally, it’s always worth tasting over several days unless the juice actually deteriorates, which almost never happens to me with a good young wine. Maybe never has happened to me (again, prerequisites being the wine is (a) good, and (b) young; let’s add (c) unspoofed). Sometimes more pleasurable on day one, sometimes day four, but always interesting.
Maybe my interest in a wine changing is because of drinking red Burgundy. Each bottle of Burgundy, let alone each bottling, to me seems a little different, and age does some unpredictable things. So, I now get bored drinking a wine where every glass tastes the same, and in some regions [Napa cab for me] where sometimes it seems like every glass of EVERY wine tastes the same, at least until they’ve had a lot of air or age. Drinking a wine over four days is a little like drinking four wines, and I like that.
However, I have been a fan of leaving big red wines open for days, at room temp, no preservatives, ever since I got really interested in wine, decades before I entered the Burgundy minefield. This is why I haven’t bought a Coravin yet.
The fridge (for me) is for opened wines that are older, or that I won’t re-try for a week or so. When it’s time to re-try it, if I can’t leave the bottle out for a half hour, I pour the glass and microwave it for ten seconds then shake the heck out of it to integrate all the minipockets.
If the wine upon first opening it is showing a little old, though, for me even the fridge won’t keep it from getting worse. But then there’s the magic of watching the wine change, sometimes dramatically for the better, over the course of day one, often an older-seeming wine becoming fresh again, which I love.
Or, an “older-seeming” maturing red Burgundy then seeming almost fully mature, which is what I hope for: more harmony and mellower elements. For the second time in a month I had this happen with an older wine. Opened a 1990 Engel Clos Vougeot Monday night. It was mellowing seemed on the cusp of maturity. Left in decanter for 6-7 hours after cleaning of sediment. It got better and better and though there was still relatively prominent acidity (yes…even in 1990) and vibrant fruit, it was maturing. Put the rest back in bottle; no refrigeration (I almost never do that), last night it was in my view a wine that was in perfect harmony: the acidity and the fruit were “one” and no tannins to speak of. Though I would have rather aged the bottle for 5 more years, and will for the others, this, I think, is an excellent preview of what its potential is/what is to come. I think aeration shows that…or that it has none.
But, I am not looking for vibrant, “fresh” fruit returning with aeration: I am looking for the wine to show its beauty, aromatically and on the palate…and then…show its potential thereafter. Like a movie trailer. This one and a '95 Rion NSG Hauts-Pruliers last month both did that in spades. I’ve been paying closer attention to this thanks to this thread.
I have no doubt most whites benefit from lots of air. The reds are trickier, I think. More variables.