What do you do with your over the hill wine?

[Scott_Brunson]

@Berry Crawford

Its unlikely the wines in my cellar will fade before I do. Just not an issue.

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I keep between 700-800, drink wine with nearly every dinner and we enjoy aged wine.

[David_Glasser]

@D@vid Bu3ker

I have been at this for 21 years and have never pulled a bottle that was OTH.

Been at it even longer and can say the same except for a couple of premoxed whites.

On the occasion that I’ve bought too enthusiastically, I’ve sent the excess to auction before it goes OTH.

[DougS]

What I’ve done:

1. Cook with the open bottle or dump it, depending on how bad it is and whether or not I’m cooking something that day.

2. Open all remaining bottles as soon as reasonably possible. Some might be good.

3. Focus on buying wines for the cellar with long aging curves and only replenish daily drinkers and shorter aging wines as quickly as I deplete them, regardless of my temptation when I see great deals.

Keeping the cellar cold isn’t a bad idea either. Bern’s has tons of wine that’s drinking great that would probably be over the hill or completely dead in a warmer cellar.

[Michael_O_Brien]

What Doug said. First option is to cook with them unless they would ruin the food. Might stimulate a starting a slow cooker dish that will be eaten at a later date. Had some really good luck using over the hill reds with a wild boar sausage recipe my wife has.

[E_Mark_Larson]

“Drinking Windows” are BS. They are fun for buffs to intellectualize, but they are BS. Stop obsessing about them.

[Dennis_Kanagie]

@E. Mark Larson

“Drinking Windows” are BS. They are fun for buffs to intellectualize, but they are BS. Stop obsessing about them.

Is that so? Well, then, Mr. Drinking Window Conspiracy Theory Debunker, what would you call the period of several years where a bottle has fully matured and tastes wonderful, where all the phenols and other suspended compounds have precipitated out and become sediment leaving a perfectly aged wine? I know that I can certainly tell, as well as my friends ITB in our wine club, that my 1995 Arrowood Reserve Speciale is fully resolved and at it’s peak drinking window right now, but the 2001 Arrowood Reserve Speciale is still much more tannic and needs several more years on the rack. To most everyone I know, the term “drinking window” applies to wines that are like the '95 mentioned above. Please give me the facts to back up your argument. As a n00b, I’d love to be educated.

Thanks!

[David_Bu3ker]

That is your drinking window Dennis. Any relation to my drinking window for the same wine is completely coincidental. Same goes for virtually everyone else here. It’s a guessing game with no right answer except the answer that is right for you.

Drinking windows are BS if they are handed down as being useful for more than the person who created them.

[Dave_McCloskey]

“Gift it away and pretend you gave them a treasure?”

[CJ_Beazley]

@D@vid Bu3ker

That is your drinking window Dennis. Any relation to my drinking window for the same wine is completely coincidental. Same goes for virtually everyone else here. It’s a guessing game with no right answer except the answer that is right for you.

Drinking windows are BS if they are handed down as being useful for more than the person who created them.

Right, look at Pobega, his drinking window is more of a drive-thru…

[Sanjay_Nandurkar]

Give it to your over the hill friends

[DougS]

It is extremely subjective, but there’s a point for everyone after which the wine tastes too old. Except maybe things like certain fortifieds and Vin Jaune.

[brodie_thomson]

Some of my friends regard me as the vinous equivalent of the necrophiliac. I love old wines and for me “over the hill” is other most people’s “dead and gone”.

To me old wines are like old friends, they may have lost some of their youthful enthusiasm and charm but they still your friends and you overlook their foibles and idiosyncrasies. In older wines I am more forgiving and less judgmental, more interested in what they have to say today, rather than what they might have said 5-10 or 20 years earlier.

I find it rare that I drink an older wine and “this is over the hill”. But then my OTH goal posts are located differently than most.

[Dennis_Kanagie]

@D@vid Bu3ker

That is your drinking window Dennis. Any relation to my drinking window for the same wine is completely coincidental. Same goes for virtually everyone else here. It’s a guessing game with no right answer except the answer that is right for you.

Drinking windows are BS if they are handed down as being useful for more than the person who created them.

Okay, so there is such thing as a “drinking window” - but it’s defined by your own personal taste and may or may not be the same as somebody else’s ideal period to consume said wine. Gotcha.

[Rick.T]

Most drinking windows are suggestions in CT and like many say, BS. If you know the drinking window on a particular wine, edit that data point in CT.

[David_Glasser]

A wine is OTH when I think it’s OTH, not when it’s beyond someone else’s age range.

To further complicate things, there are wines that seem to be OTH, only to rise years later like a phoenix. Sometimes it’s bottle variation but sometimes I believe that wines can go in and out of “dead” phases.

[Gerhard_P]

1st I buy only a tiny quantity of wine that isn´t meant to be aged - so most bottles will reach their plateau of maturity only after 10-20+ years … and hold for another decade or longer …

2nd I usually buy only quantities of max. 12 bottles - very rarely 18 or 24 (so far only 3 different wines between 18 and 24 bt in my cellar) - an in many instances I have (had) only, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 bts.

3rd: if a wine is really totally over the hill can only be decided after tasting it … so if this is really the case (usually single bottles or max 2-3 bts. bought at auction) I simply use it for cooking …
otherwise even very mature wines that might have been “better” some years ago still can provide pleasure and are interesting in a different way.

[Ty_Hockstaff]

@Joe B

Seriously asking.

I know a lot of you have large quantities of wine. I’m only at 325 bottles but I’m real worried about spending too much more money on more wine than I can ever possibly drink within its expected “drinking window”. There is a difference in mature/aged wine and over the hill wine. And every wine is different.

So what is the procedure.

Sit on it as it adds to bottle count?
Drink it even though you would rather open up something good?
Gift it away and pretend you gave them a treasure?
Sell it on winebid to anybody who will take it?

If you stopped purchasing wine now, and consumed two bottles per week, you would run out of wine in roughly three years. 325 bottles is hardly anything, especially if you consider how much wine you give away as gifts etc. I might get one out of 100 wines that is copper colored pond water that I will simply dump and move on to something else in the cellar. Don’t over think it!

[Carlton_McCrindle]

@Anton D

Oxidized or too old goes into the cooking jug.

Had not thought of this. Anton or others, how do you do this? Any guidelines or suggestions?

[E_Mark_Larson]

@Dennis Kanagie

@E. Mark Larson

“Drinking Windows” are BS. They are fun for buffs to intellectualize, but they are BS. Stop obsessing about them.

Is that so? Well, then, Mr. Drinking Window Conspiracy Theory Debunker, what would you call the period of several years where a bottle has fully matured and tastes wonderful, where all the phenols and other suspended compounds have precipitated out and become sediment leaving a perfectly aged wine? I know that I can certainly tell, as well as my friends ITB in our wine club, that my 1995 Arrowood Reserve Speciale is fully resolved and at it’s peak drinking window right now, but the 2001 Arrowood Reserve Speciale is still much more tannic and needs several more years on the rack. To most everyone I know, the term “drinking window” applies to wines that are like the '95 mentioned above. Please give me the facts to back up your argument. As a n00b, I’d love to be educated.

Thanks!

Sorry Dennis, I have been “off the grid” for the last few days. I don’t want you to perceive my post as a “hit and run.”

I am envious of your experence with the '95 Arrowood Reserve. Clearly all of as hope for that kind of ethereal experience when we open every bottle. I concede that my comment was meant to be provocative. I did try to ameliorate it a bit by suggesting that there is nothing wrong with a group of tasters discussing a wine speculating whether a given wine had potential for improvement with further aging, is currently at its peak for enjoyment, or is in decline. So, OK, let’s call that peak period the “drinking window.” I concede.

My gripe is that too many people take these date pairs from the critics or from their CellarTracker database and treat them as if they were chiseled onto a stone tablet and handed to some wine prophet on a mountaintop by Bacchus himself. I definitely had the impression that the OP considered the second date of the “drinking window” to be the equivalent of an FDA-mandated expiration date. Personally, I am also getting tired of being called a baby killer if I pull something out of my inventory and open it up before the first of those dates.

Yes, everything I have written is opinion, not fact. It is my opinion and, surprise, I also have a belly button. However, just looking at some of the posts in this conversation there are instances where people have enjoyed their wines long after that second date. Were those not sufficient facts?

[Dennis_Kanagie]

@E. Mark Larson

@Dennis Kanagie

@E. Mark Larson

“Drinking Windows” are BS. They are fun for buffs to intellectualize, but they are BS. Stop obsessing about them.

Is that so? Well, then, Mr. Drinking Window Conspiracy Theory Debunker, what would you call the period of several years where a bottle has fully matured and tastes wonderful, where all the phenols and other suspended compounds have precipitated out and become sediment leaving a perfectly aged wine? I know that I can certainly tell, as well as my friends ITB in our wine club, that my 1995 Arrowood Reserve Speciale is fully resolved and at it’s peak drinking window right now, but the 2001 Arrowood Reserve Speciale is still much more tannic and needs several more years on the rack. To most everyone I know, the term “drinking window” applies to wines that are like the '95 mentioned above. Please give me the facts to back up your argument. As a n00b, I’d love to be educated.

Thanks!

Sorry Dennis, I have been “off the grid” for the last few days. I don’t want you to perceive my post as a “hit and run.”

I am envious of your experence with the '95 Arrowood Reserve. Clearly all of as hope for that kind of ethereal experience when we open every bottle. I concede that my comment was meant to be provocative. I did try to ameliorate it a bit by suggesting that there is nothing wrong with a group of tasters discussing a wine speculating whether a given wine had potential for improvement with further aging, is currently at its peak for enjoyment, or is in decline. So, OK, let’s call that peak period the “drinking window.” I concede.

My gripe is that too many people take these date pairs from the critics or from their CellarTracker database and treat them as if they were chiseled onto a stone tablet and handed to some wine prophet on a mountaintop by Bacchus himself. I definitely had the impression that the OP considered the second date of the “drinking window” to be the equivalent of an FDA-mandated expiration date. Personally, I am also getting tired of being called a baby killer if I pull something out of my inventory and open it up before the first of those dates.

Yes, everything I have written is opinion, not fact. It is my opinion and, surprise, I also have a belly button. However, just looking at some of the posts in this conversation there are instances where people have enjoyed their wines long after that second date. Were those not sufficient facts?

Okay, now your opinion is clear - and I’d agree with your criticism of critics (loved the Bacchus and FDA lines, btw) since nobody can see the future. The only way to know is to occasionally open a bottle and see how it’s improved or declined since the last one.

Thanks!