For me, this comes down to the fact that there are no great young wines that do not have the potential to mature in a positive fashion. Almost nothing in wine is absolute, but I’ve been thinking about this for quite a while, and I am convinced there are no exceptions. Every great wine I’ve had was either aged or had the potential to improve with age, sometimes both. I definitely consider potential for improvement in my quality assessment of a wine.
Greg, you’re just old! 
No doubt and pleasantness isn’t the same as greatness, subjectively perceived or otherwise.
Excluding curiosity/experimentation or investment purposes, what good/legit reason exists to waste cellar space on aging any wine that doesn’t show you some degree of greatness from day 1?
Not to imply I haven’t been guilty of doing this, I’ve still got a few wines in the cellar that I’m hoping will “come around” or “turn the corner.” But after doing this for 13 years and honing in on what I value and look for in a wine, I’m no longer holding my breath that they will (QC being one example…). And the majority purchases like this were ones I made back in the day while still under the influence of Parker’s reviews and his huge drinking windows.
So now, while I have an expectation of some varieties to age better and that certain producers will have made wines in a style more intended for the cellar, I’m not going to waste my limited space on anything that doesn’t show me something great from day 1. Which is the long way of saying I don’t place much value on aging as a quality when purchasing wine.
Well for some regions, if you don’t buy it and store it yourself it may not be possible to find the wine later. But you have a good point that if storage is a constraint, then one needs to think about all this differently. And perhaps with the rise of the secondary market in wine via the internet / commerce corner etc. perhaps it will be easier in the future for people to find obscure things, years later.
I don’t score wine.
But, I tend to like flavors of mature wines and tend to buy wines that I hope will have good aging potential.
What I buy has to change because I am getting to the point where the wines have better aging potential than I do, but I still place a large value on older wine.
That’s fair. I thought you meant that they taste great from the beginning.
While I certainly don’t mind that the discussion has shifted at times to the “buying criterion” decision vs. “what do I think of what’s in the glass”, I’ll clarify that the second area of focus is what I was mostly thinking about myself.
Cris, welcome to the board!
Maluhia,
Mike
Is it correct to assume that you are limiting the discussion to wines that one has no clue to the aging potential until it is tried? Is that why it has to be in the glass?
I had a think about this, and whilst I don’t score wine, I often pay +25 to 50% of current retail for a wine that has been matured a decade or two, up to maybe + 75 to 100% of current retail for a ~ 30 year old fully mature wine.
That does depend on the wine - some are cheaper than current retail, whilst others (e.g. Musar) ramp up very fast as the wines mature.
More or less, yes, Michael—though I grant that you still can, of course, have some preconceptions/expectations etc. about any unopened wine (and be wrong about those preconceptions 
) e.g. 2005 red burgundies from 1er and up (for me), still looking at long-term ageing track, 2009 California Pinot (for me) drinking in a very nice spot right now, etc.
I knew someone had to have tackled at least a good part of this concept. Many thanks for the link, I will definitely read carefully.
Mike
Wine is a single use product. When it’s ready, it’s ready. So ageability has zero value to me. And actually, it’s often the converse for me - wines I have to age are a liability until they mature. That’s why I really respect a winery like Vega Sicilia that waits 10 years to release their Unico, because they feel it needs that time. They take the responsibility of keeping it safe until it’s ready to drink.
mmm, I don’t know if I’ll be doing more harm than good with this post, but two tasting notes:
"2010 G.D. Vajra Barolo Bricco Delle Viole
Leather, hints of old socks, dried red fruits, tinge of smoke…just not giving much up right now, scent-wise. A curious iodine secondary. On the tongue, eek, run for cover. So very strict right now. Big, big bones, but the tannins and acid lash at you for now. Hard to assess other than 15 years needed at least."
"1996 Emmanuel Rouget Echezeaux
For me, earth and goodly dark chocolate meet plums and blackberry in the aroma. Very elegant, and will be stunning, but not yet. terrific complexity with nuances of earth, cocoa, black and red fruit. It’s not as expressive as it will be, but super class–this is the future beauty pageant winner, a level of sophistication already that is just that cut above everything else on the table. WOTD."
I think we all agreed at that lunch that the Rouget was looking at 10 years minimum to get to where I described. For my personal assessment, this really shows the pendulum, as even I can look at these and say I’m more excited about one wine than the other. ![[dontknow.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/2/259bbc27e64baab255bbf586025626180d3e97e8.gif "dontknow"){kind=small}
And there is one of the many issues with judging most wines and awarding medals and points: are you grading for today or tomorrow?
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When tasting a young wine, if I rate each of them 90 pts, but I don’t think one of them will improve with age and I do think the other one will, then I will generally prefer the one that I think will improve with age. My explanation for this is that I generally prefer aged wines; I try to avoid cellaring wines that don’t/won’t improve with cellaring.
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I think so. Yes.
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I choose to use the 50 pts for showing up, 5 for color/appearance, 15 for Nose, 20 for Taste/Structure, 10 Overall/Ability to improve with age scale. The only place where “ageability” can actually garner points is in that last category. How many points I give is a bit hard to pin down, but it’s probably in the 1 - 4 points range. For example, if I’m tasting an incredibly young Bdx., and it’s a tight, primary, tannic beast, then it’s probably going to lose a point or two on the Nose for being tight (and presumably not very complex right now), it will maybe lose a point or two on Taste if it’s very oaky, or monolithic, but it will gain a point or two on Taste/Structure if I sense it’s proportioned in such a way that I would expect it to improve in the cellar. On the Overall section of the score, that is where the wine could potentially “get back” the points it “lost” on the Nose and Taste due to its youthfulness. If my ageability prediction turns out to be accurate, then the wine will likely pick up a point or two on Nose and Taste, both, over time. And, over time, those “ageability” or “potential” points in the Overall section become points attributed to the Here and Now. Not sure if that makes sense … it’s somewhat difficult to precisely discuss something about which you never precisely think.
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Producer & Locale: No. Grape: Yes.
I do value ageability different depending on the grape (or blend) because I have different ageing preferences for different grapes. For example, to the extent I like Viognier, I prefer it young. Riesling I enjoy at all ages, so ageability is a concern, but not a huge concern. Cabernet Sauvignon, typically, I don’t like young but love it with at least 10 years of age, so ageability is a large concern with that grape.
As for Producer and Locale: I think both of those factor into my guess as to whether a wine will age well, but those factors don’t change the extent to which I want the wine to be able to age. -
Not really. But I feel I know a lot more now than I did 10 years ago, so I would expect my present-day guesses to have a higher success rate than my ageability guesses of 10 years ago.
Those are splendid answers and thoughts, Brian—many thanks for sharing them.
Haere Ra,
Mike
When I’m personally rating a wine or making a TN for cellartracker or other for example, I try to strike a balance. For example: I want my rating to be reflective of what is in my glass at that moment, because I want someone reading the tasting note (or myself later) to know where the wine is at. at the same time, I try not to do things like knock off points for massive tannins in a 2013 Barolo, because that’s expected. When these things are happening in my scoring, I try to note it in my TN. Any guesses I’m making at the lifespan of the wine are mostly for prosperity- I want to be able to look back and know when I thought the next bottle would be best and want others to be able to use my notes for the same.
Matt,
Although you don’t knock points off for massive tannins in a young Barolo (and nor would I), don’t you think those massive tannins get in the way of flavor complexity that might otherwise reveal itself? Or am I on an island with that viewpoint?
I very rarely, if ever, bring back up an old thread of mine, but we have many new members in the 4+ years since I posted this and would love to hear from them on this, which continues to intrigue me.