I’ve had a small handful of older wines (20+ years) in my time. They were all cabs or cab blends and all had notes of oxidation. Some heavy (undrinkable) and some lighter (drinkable but not sure it was to my liking). Last night I had a 1985 Chateau Grand Corbin St. Emilion Grand Cru that I picked up from JJ Buckley late last year. There were no notes of oxidation at all. It was just a very soft wine, as I assume all the tannins were fully integrated. Soft like a Sangiovese. I liked it. So here’s my question: Is some oxidation OK or even desirable? I’m traveling without a guide, so help appreciated.
Oxidation is a sign either of too old wine or not enough protection against O2 …
maybe the wines simply were not good and strong enough … but the Grand Corbin was …
Grand Corbin isn´t an exceptional Chateau in St.Emilion, but a well kept 85 can still be good …
(BTW: there is not much CS in the blend, rather Merlot and Cab.Francs …)
So oxidation is not desirable, but in very developed (old) wines a hint of oxy can be tolerable … provided the rest is interesting and complex enough …
I have had some oxidation on white wines that have aged, including Vouvray and white Burgundy, but I have never had Cabernet or Merlot that tasted oxidized - unless the wines were dead. I have had hundreds of wines over 20 years old.
Oxidation would indicate the wine was poorly stored, or aged longer than it could handle, or aged longer than the cork could handle, or all of the above.
Difficult to paint oxidation as a positive for red or white table wines. All I can say is that some (myself included) will tolerate some of it, if the other aged-derived (aka tertiary) complexities mean the overall wine is more interesting than when it was younger.
[edit: Just noticed Gerhard has posted just about the same comment]
regards
Ian
Agreed, you don’t want to see much oxidation. You might consider picking up the same wine at a few different ages to capture the potential aging curve (acknowledging vintage differences). If bordeaux is of interest, Cantemerle would be a good and not terribly expensive option. This approach helped me to wrap my head around aging more than getting individual time points on various wines.
What were the wines and where did they come from? Sounds like bad storage. Even fairly modest cabs tend to last a long time and shouldn’t show oxidation at 20 years unless they’ve been abused.
They were all cabs or cab blends and all had notes of oxidation.
In addition to what the folks above have said, are we sure we’re talking about oxidation?
Maybe so, but maybe it’s something else you’re detecting consistently? For example, I’d think that bad storage is maybe more likely to result in cooked wine than in oxidized wine.