When I got into this racket about 7 years ago, my local wine place said that the best way to understand the dumb phase was to buy Chateauneufs – they drank well on release, went to sleep for a while, and generally started drinking well again seven-ish years later. (Is this still true? Was it ever true?) The 2010s were just being released then, so I drank a couple (they were great!) and buried the rest. I have always aimed to start on my remaining 2010s in 2020, and the tasting notes suggest they’re indeed starting to wake up again.
I second Maureen. There’s a well-established dumb phase for a lot of wines. Hell–there’s a dumb phase for Chablis. Understanding this, and learning how to deal with this, is integral to enjoying fine wines from a number of different regions. If you are not aware, and don’t communicate, you may miss out on enjoying many of these wines at an appropriate time (eg, how many folks drank up their 99 red burgs well before their time?)
Explaining why this phase occurs, which was the OP’s question, is more difficult. I don’t have an answer.
Explaining it is what is hard, and also why Nate’s post wasn’t entirely wrong. A lot of people assert with confidence that this or that is happening, but that doesn’t mean they’re correct in their assessments, or that they have a clue. Some wines apparently do go through some kind of “dumb” phase, but I think the reasons are likely to vary for each specific wine. And I don’t think you can really say with confidence that a particular wine will enter it at such and such date and exit at some other fixed date. At least I’ve never heard a single wine maker make predictions with that kind of confidence. It’s the wine drinkers that have the confidence to make those predictions.
The OP may gather a lot of information from this thread, but I think his question was best answered by Todd.
Someone once quoted Gaston Huet, the great Vouvray wine producer, saying that you should wait 17 years for his wines to come around. That stuck with me due to its specificity.
Indeed, I quoted that person quoting Huet in a thread three years ago on this very topic. That discussion also contained this memorable comment on the same questions posed by the OP here:
One also wonders how many bottles on retail shelves are in a dumb phase but (and) get consumed within a few days by unsuspecting consumers who then conclude that it’s a terrible wine.
thanks for the heads up on that post. some helpful information there and a great quote!
When it happens and why it happens is as much a mystery to me as to everyone else. But I have a pretty good idea of what I think it is. At some point in aging, the baby fat fruit recedes and what you are left with, for the moment at least, is tannin and acid. After some years, the fruit comes back out in an evolved way and, one hopes, the tannins have softened. Even if you know a wine well, though, it’s almost impossible for me at least to predict when it will happen.
I agree that looking at CellarTracker is an excellent idea. Dumb phases vary by region, grape variety, vineyard, winery and vintage (and probably a few other things). Do note that as Rory indicates there a lot of people posting notes who cannot tell the difference between a dumb phase and over the hill (very hard to do sometimes and it takes experience, history with the wines from the estate, etc.). If you see a combination of posts some of which indicate the wine is too young and others that the wine is over the hill, you may have found a wine in a dumb stage.
I agree that dumb phases are real based on experience having tasted a wine that seems over the hill and then five years later is really good. Two great examples were a 1988 Bruno Clair Vosne Romanee (where I was totally fooled) and a 2002 D’Angerville Volnay Premier Cru (where others thought the wine was over the hill and I thought it was too young - I was eventually proven right). The best way for me to tell frankly is experience with the winery. If I know a winery has a track record for wines aging well, and I taste a wine from them at 5-10 years old or so showing nothing (not just primary, but showing nothing) and the wine does not look old (no browning, etc.), I assume the wine is in a dumb stage.
I think I emerged from my dumb phase when I retired.
This is the best answer I’ve seen yet in terms of trying to identify when a wine I’m drinking is in a dumb stage. For a wine I don’t know well, using TNs from here and known palates on CellarTracker before opening a bottle is the best way to avoid this predicament. But not 100% reliable as different storage conditions can have an effect as well.
As to the why and how of what’s happening, I agree with Todd: it’s a mystery.
Quote: “When is a particular wine at its “best”? This is a question that is often posed, and one that is almost impossible to answer. Why? Because wine is a living, evolving entity, and like we humans, it does not have one particular moment in its life at which it is “optimal.” It goes through many stages, some good and some less so, which is what makes wine—and the human race—so intriguing!”
As hippy-dippy as it sounds, there have been winemaker explanations as far flung as barometric pressure due to storm fronts to vibrational wave cancellation like in sound. It is real, and chemistry hasn’t been able to figure it out, unsurprisingly. As much of a hassle as it is I like that it makes it that much more impossible to re-create wines through science, keeping the mystery and excitement of wine alive.
Excellent
Great point! Thanks for the tip.
Also a great point. As much as I wish I had it figured out now so as to never “waste” a good wine, I can only imagine that it would be pretty miserable not getting to experiment with bottles at different times and experience the changes.
If you can find a wine that you like and isn’t too expensive, it can be very educational to buy a large enough quantity to follow the wine over many years. I bought 3.5 cases of Niepoort Redoma 2001 and still have half a case left. This wine has gone through many different stages including what I believe most would consider a dumb period where it wasn’t as enjoyable as either before or after. But it went through a number of other changes as well that I would never have understood it only having tried 2-3 bottles.
When I worked the tasting room of a small winery, we had one wine that went in and out of a phase 3 or 4 times. For the first 6 months i worked there I thought the wine just wasn’t that good, then it blossomed only to shut back down again a few weeks later and stay that way for a few months. Next time it opened up for longer before shutting down again but not as long this time and then repeated the pattern a few more times before finally leaving this dumb phase for good. Few who don’t work in the business taste the same wine often enough to understand just how wild the ride can be for some wines.
And another great quote from Seiber!
Saying you should wait 17 years sounds nice because nobody is going to double check him in 17 years to see if the wine is indeed better. Burt Williams used to say seven years is a good time to drink your Pinot Noir. But those are off the cuff remarks that don’t answer much, other than to say that those guys believed their wines would be better with a little time. They don’t really address the “dumb phase” at all, and they really are more about personal preferences. Some people say you should keep some Rieslings for years, but that doesn’t mean that the people who prefer them younger are wrong, just that they prefer different things.
Frankly, these days, aside from checking cellar tracker, one of the best strategies if you are planning ahead is just to post a note on the boards–“Hey–I’m thinking of opening a 99 Giacosa X on Saturday–does anyone have any recent experience–what do you think?” the collective experience on this board and others can be extremely helpful.
It’s always a relief to discover that an old quote of yours that gets dredged up wasn’t of the embarrassing stupid ones!
Question for the group:
In my understanding, there has to have been a young open phase which ends beforehand, in order for it now to be a dumb phase. If the wine has just always been “too young and not yet enjoyable,” like a six year old Barolo or something, then it’s just too young and not ready, not in a dumb phase.
I would also guess that the latter (it’s just too young) is far more common than the former (it has entered a dumb phase).
Anyone agree or disagree?