You are not understanding my point. I love what I do, always have. And the thought of suddenly not doing that anymore….just seems like the end of the major chapter of my life.
I am definitely excited to have more time, I love to travel, love the theatre, love live music (as long as I can sit close to the bathrooms), and love to explore. But there is this glaring need to be in the thick of things that I am really going to miss. AND, I have never paid for a wine tasting in my life. That’s obviously going to change. It will all work out I am sure, just a matter of getting my head straight.
May I ask what people think the draw and appeal of aged wine is? I ask because to me, I like the fruit taste in wine, and fruit diminishes with age - sharply in many cases. It seems like old wine is often fetishized. I only age wines that are too tannic and beastly in their youth. After they calm down and are drinkable, I don’t find any benefit from continued aging in many cases. I don’t know, but a wine from the 90s, even a top wine, seems old to me and I much prefer the same wine that is 10 years old. What do you folks like about aged wines? I just don’t like the diminished fruit and tannins. What am I missing?
I’ll give you a rudimentary answer why some some prefer not to drink rudimentary wine. It really comes down to preferring the complex over the simple. Fruit flavors are available with fruit juice. Really no need to go through the trouble of making it into wine. The tertiary aromas and flavors that come with proper aging add significant complexity to wine. But then there is aging and there is aging. Relative short term aging can add some complexity while still retaining an enjoyable fruit profile. Granted the end result of long term aging is not everybody’s preferred glass of wine.
Are there many other things in the world of food and drink that you can age as long as wine and they taste better than when new? Like you can age cheese, but not for 30 years. Right?
i dunno, it just seems weird to me that 30 years in a bottle will make wine better.
But I do get that a Barolo or other tannic wine will be “too much” in the early years and needs to wait. But 20 or 30 plus years when the fruit and tannin are gone and there is that oxidized taste ….. maybe it’s just me. But I wonder if there is a fetishizing. I have seen people extol and celebrate old burgundy and you can literally see the particles of sediment in the glass, and the fruit and tannins are gone …. I don’t follow, which is why I ask why other people are into it. I’m not saying we should open all our 2022 Bordeaux. What I am saying is that perhaps the real Old BDX gets fetishized?
At some point in our life, the limiting constraint ceases to be money. It becomes time. So the question becomes, how do you want to best make use of the time you have left.
Why would you want to spend it “… sitting around with nothing to do …”? (your words). You … can … do … whatever … you … want. There is a whole world of things to do and explore. Do you really not have enough things you want to do?
I’m 62. Retired 5 years ago. Still never enough time to do everything i want to do. So I do stuff tomorrow. This whole “… bored in retirement …” thing doesn’t compute with me.
At 57 years old I’m pretty close to you in age. I have a pretty similar take. I don’t need to try everything in tye world anymore, but I’m also not stopping from buying (outside of when we’re paying for a bigger vintage for the winery).
But I seriously doubt our personal cellar would be much of a hassle for anyone to get rid of.
I think this is helping me gain a little perspective on the retirement topic. First, for most of us, our work life had a clear arc and objective to it; you have a career, try to rise up (whatever that means), make some (or a lot) of money, solve interesting challenges, earn a little prestige, etc. It’s a long term play with measurable objectives and outcomes, wins and losses. I’m guessing most of us on this thread are/were reasonably successful in this.
Upon retirement that clarity is gone. So the first objective is to fill the time. No one wants to sit around and be bored. And it shouldn’t be too difficult to “fill time.”
But that said, is having a series of hobbies (golf, music, travel, cooking, wine clubs, etc.) enough? They fill the time admirably, but the arc is not the same. The hobbies are enjoyable, you can get better and the stress is less than the typical career.
That’s my debate. So far, I’m enjoying my hobbies and am not sitting around. But will I find it as satisfying as my business career. That’s not clear to me yet.
The biggest difference for us is the ability to travel, take advantage of opportunities, midweek discounts, etc. Don’t have to plan or think about work.
I do miss some of the challenges of my work career, which was a mix of technical development, business, conferences, interactions with customers. But the reduction in pressure, stress, deadlines, business travel, makes up for that. I’ve found things to do, like scanning all the family photos. Small projects around the house, trying to go back to guitar, etc.
I definitely don’t miss commuting to work, and dealing with so much busywork that wasn’t productive or fun.
I compare this to athletes who retire and chase the competitive fire post career but there’s nothing relative to that high level competition. There are other things we can fill our time with however, we just aren’t rewarded with pay for the bulk of them.
it’s interesting seeing the posts and knowing I’m edging into that age group, eventually.
The complexity makes it more interesting, more satisfying, and better smelling and tasting. To me.
It’s not about the number of years, it’s about the taste and smell of the wine. Some wines take 30 years to peak for my palate, many others are showing beautiful aged complexity by age 20. Others never develop that and are drinking their best, again for my palate, 3 or 5 or 10 years after release. They may still be worth cellaring for that length of time if they offer pleasure. It’s not like 30 year old Bordeaux is the only thing I like. Not that there’s anything weird about that either.
Nor is it wrong with it seeming odd or not understanding it. We all have different preferences. Sometimes they change over time, sometimes not. I didn’t get aged Burgundy until I tried a few good ones. I didn’t get old Barolo until my palate changed. I still don’t get Sangiovese and I’ve fallen out of love with most Chateuneuf. But I’ve always loved Bordeaux.
A great thread - interesting to hear the various views and experiences.
I have a couple of decades to go before I will be able to share any old folks’ wisdom. I unfortunately got to the building cellar advises and shifting taste preference threads somewhat late, valuable considerations/learnings and luckily some of it was sponged in good time.
Of course depending on individual preference and what matured and aged means to each of us - Personally I often enjoy aged red wines that a still has fruits/berries as part of the complexity. There are plenty of wines (even from the 90s) that has it, and tons of other (to me) attractive nuances that doesn’t involve tasting dead.
Except that, the textural aspect is one of the things I love with aged wines. From a sensual caress to textural grip that’s more in the background. I also prefer there to be a sort of energy and “vibration” to the wine.
I wouldn’t equate a 20-30 year old Barolo with the “fruit and tannins gone or the wine taste oxidized” - For me that would be a bad showing of Barolo/Barbaresco. Some bottles start off like that, requires a bit of time for the resurrection to happen - then they are fresh and youthful, with more complexity in flavors as well as texturally. If you look in the nebbiolo thread you will see my notes about a barbaresco and Boca from the 90s. The former improved over time but was youthful from the start, while the Boca required a full day and half an evening to really get going.
I say this as someone who doesn’t enjoy the dead, tired, “interesting” for the age type of person. Tried quite a few that has satisfied my intellectual curiosity.
On the otherhand some will definitely enjoy more evolved aged wines than I do.
A lot of old wines are just old. Well stored, high quality wines, can maintain freshness and fruit even when aged 30-40 years, and in that time develop increased complexity in aromatics, palate, and finish. For example we had a 76 Rousseau Chambertin a few years ago that could have been a 16 with the color and amount of fruit, but had intense complexity on the bouquet and palate. The only concession to age was that it faded after about 2 hours in the glass.
I value freshness above almost everything else, especially for whites, and have a very low threshold for just pouring stuff out when isn’t fresh, while some people really like fruitless old tertiary wines. There’s definitely some amount of fetishization for aged wines, but the right wines, if well stored, can be magical. As wines age, the number of bottles in this category significantly decrease, though.
I agree MChang. At a vinous event I tasted the 2008 and 2020 Ornellaia and the former was so much better. My query is for the wines where the tannins and fruit are gone and the tertiary flavors are not so interesting, but still, simply because it is 30 plus years old, people rave about it. In fact, I personally have never encountered tertiary flavors so appealing that they outweigh the entire loss of fruit and tannin. But that’s just me. I was curious why others find it appealing
I’m not an old folk (41), but I’m enjoying this thread. Gives me good insight and planning. Also if anyone is looking for a surrogate child, reach out. I have somewhat “limited” experience maybe having only tasted 1500 wines in my life. I haven’t had some of the classic old wines that people rave about, but my personal feeling thus far has been that beyond 20 years, storage is critical, unless it was a massively tannic wine, in which case the fruit may also fall out.
I’m 53 and Jonathan is 51 and we have enough wine to make @Robert_Dentice feel better about his cellar. We drank 340 bottles last year, which was way less than we ever have before. I expect consumption to decline over coming years, though maybe not as drastically.
As I’ve said many times, I’m not terribly worried about this state of affairs. The point of the cellar is to have a wide variety of wines that we love at various states of development, so we have almost anything we might want available on any given day. I’m much more worried about running out of something I love than about dying with wine left. I’m pretty sure someone will happily drink it. So we do still buy wine, albeit a lot less, and mostly focused on keeping up stocks of our favorites, filling in gaps that have arisen from drinking down supplies,and making sure we have some wines that will hit maturity down the road.
That said, there are definitely some wines we will probably never need to buy again, given long aging curves, lower consumption rates and deep stocks. And we now buy more significant young wines in quantities of 6 rather than 12. For instance, we’ve picked up some promising 2021 barolo, mostly in 6 pack.
Finally, I’ll repeat another things I’ve said here from time to time - it would be foolish of me to pretend that having wine isn’t its own sort of satisfying and exciting. I love going down into the cellar and seeing the racks full or bottles, roaming around reminding myself what’s there, browsing regions full of possibilities. No, it’s not as exciting as the drinking part, but it warms my heart.
At one point in time I had that fear. One of the key points of my career enjoyment was that every few years I ended up picking up a new topic so to speak. That continued to the end when I was getting deeper into U.S. Sanctions laws/regulations. I knew I needed to find something to learn in retirement. After dabbling with a couple of things that didn’t resonate I started doing more reading (and listening) on retirement planning. I got hooked! It feeds my data analysis needs and it’s ultimately quite complex. It’s it at all what I was expecting to dive into, but then life always has unexpected twists and turns.
We drank 340 bottles last year, which was way less than we ever have before. I expect consumption to decline over coming years, though maybe not as drastically.