What does it mean when a wine is 'closed'?

WINE TALK
21

Awesome post Stuart!

I concur with most of what has been said. The things that constitute flavors and aromas are constantly developing and changing and at all stages some are more ephemeral than others. What we’re doing when we consume the wine has a lot to do with our impressions and some wines just never really are likely to show much anyway.

It really depends on both the wine and the taster. I’ve asked many wine makers about it and nobody has a clear-cut answer that you can apply to every wine. Seems more of a chemistry question than a wine making question at any rate.

22

I totally agree with this, from Stuart Beaunehead, above:

For me, the best way to actually evaluate the potential of “closed” wines (and wines can be closed at almost all stages…barrel (for example when they are recently racked), just bottled…or thereafter…there is no set/predictable stage of “closed” in my experience…is to concentrate on the finish…ie, whether good fruit is left on ones palate at the end of the tasting process. That often has to be coaxed with swirling .in the glass and in the mouth, etc.

A wine can be closed or “tight,” but it doesn’t mean that fruit is entirely undetectable. I agree that it’s there on the finish, and that paying close attention to that gives you an idea of whether a wine is close, or if it lacks in fruit and substance.

23

An example: In January, at Hearth, my wife and I had a bottle of The Three Foxes 2009 The Castillo Syrah, which one of the winery’s owners, Pascal Schildt, had recommended as an example of what South Africa could do with syrah.

There was a snow storm that day, and the restaurant was nearly empty. We were happily seated by a window, with snow piling down outside.

We had the wine decanted. It was pretty shut down at first. Tannic, inky, and not very giving. But by the main course (I don’t recall what we had, but it was a delicious, hearty meal perfect for the weather), the wine was beginning to show itself. Young, to be sure, but giving real pleasure in a burly masculine way. By the time we finished the bottle, the fruit was showing more and you could see some elegance and the potential for the wine, though it was still very young.

Pascal lead a tasting at my place last week, where he poured the wine, undecanted. It tasted like it was in a straightjacket. Tough, leathery. Seemingly balance, but not that pleasant or engaging. In a word: closed.

Fast forward to a few ounces of leftovers (refrigerated) the two following nights: They showed the promise of that first bottle.

The point is this: If someone had popped and poured this, they’d have said it was closed, and might not have appreciated what’s there. But drunk over an hour or two with the right food, and the depth of fruit and balance became apparent. The weather didn’t hurt either.

I should add that this wine is remarkably Northern Rhonish in profile. I’m eager to see how it does with five or ten years.

24

Well, Brian…my query was only partially TFIC. So if I go out & buy a wine that I’m totally unfamiliar with, say 2-5 yrs old,
and it’s dull as dishwater; is it “closed”, “shut down”, or just a dullard of a wine?? I simply don’t know. But I would like to know.
If I’m tasting the same wine on, say, a monthly basis, then maybe I have a chance of telling when it’s “closed”. Alas,
I never do a wine that frequently. If you’re a winemaker or work in a wnry, then maybe I would have a chance of identifying
when a wine is “shut down”. Alas, I don’t.
Tom

25

Yup, Mike…I think experience is a pretty important part of it. When I try a new Jaffurs/Qupe/EdStJon/Idlewild/ForlornHope
and it seems dull as dishwater, I will often used the term “closed” w/ the expectation, from experience, that it will be better down
the road. But if I try a new Slovene Tazzalenghe that’s dull as dishwater, I’d sorta like to have a clue if it’s worth trying again down the road.
Tom

26

Really good answers to the question above.

All I can add is an occasional complication, that a very mildly cork-tainted wine will strip some of the fruit away, leaving the tannins and acidity to the fore… and hence in such situations may appear closed if you can’t spot the aroma of TCA taint (FWIW I am very insensitive to this aroma, albeit the fruit stripping hits all of us).

regards
Ian

27

There are different categories of phenomena here.

If a component is masked, it is just overwhelmed, say by structure, and this is entirely a matter of perception. (As noted) The right food can help wipe away a dominant characteristic and reveal what’s underneath, or sometimes the dominant characteristic(s) will dissipate quicker than (some of) what’s hidden.

There are also temporary chemical changes where, say, an aromatic compound bonds to something else making it imperceptible. Some very young wines are very volatile in this way. Any Pinot producer will have horror stories about trying a barrel sample and thinking something went horribly wrong, then finding it perfectly fine a week later. I think the various types of shock fall in this category, as well as what I call mood.

Lastly there’s the weird shit Clark Smith talks about with colloids trapping these components, making them inaccessible but present.

Then there’s the difference between closed or tight and a dumb phase. If a wine is closed, it can open up with proper preparation. If it’s in a dumb phase it will not open up properly. Certainly sometimes, at least, a wine in shock or a weird mood just won’t open up, while another bottle of the same wine will be just fine.

28

I have actually had winemakers openly wonder if I tasted their wine on a root day when they read the review, And yes, there is an app for that!

29

I’m not sure I’ve seen in any of the posts above my definition of “closed”.

To me, “closed” means, when you smell the wine, even though you have read it’s a “big” wine, you smell almost nothing, and when you taste it, you taste very little. I then conclude that that wine to me is either “closed,” or it’s as Ian Sutton said, suffering from the early stage of TCA, or cork taint (which if you recork the bottle for a day comes out as full-blown TCA stink the next day).

Any other experience with a wine, I don’t call it “closed.”

Tom’s “dull” wine to me is not closed, because “dull” to me means you can taste and smell things but it’s boring and flat.

And a wine to me that is mostly tannin and acid but with a tiny bit of fruit showing is not “closed” to me, but “too young.” Those are wines where if you swirl them around in the mouth a lot then swallow them, you should get some fruit after swallowing on the finish.

Early in my wine hobby I experienced wines that had almost no taste or smell and I had read they were “big” wines so I let them sit. In the case of Heitz MV 1987 on release, it took four days to smell or taste anything (exactly what Parker later wrote and that’s when I started subscribing), and several bottles of Dunn HM (except for some burnt runner reduction) took four days to show anything. That’s “closed” to me.

Why does it happen? The only explanation I’ve ever heard that resonates is along the line of Wes Barton’s comment about compounds.