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Wine Expert
Michael De Loach
Why Nobody
(or Hardly Anybody) Really Collects or Ages Wine Anymore
Let’s start off the year right, with a nice dose of Truth: over 90% of wine is consumed nearly straightaway. (Okay, a good amount is bought in restaurants, where admittedly it may have been aged for you already. But that’s just a small portion of the overall picture.)
So what does this mean for all these obsessed folks dying to know how long they can keep their wine, and when it will be at the peak of perfection, and wanting to someday put in a 1,000 case cellar or at least a little 100-bottle temperature-controlled wine fridge? As is so often the case, my answer is, relax everybody.
What is this ageing thing about anyway? Well, technically, it’s the result of a tiny amount of oxygen coming into contact with the wine. In older bottlings this occurs both from the “headspace” (air between the wine and the cork) and through the cork itself, through osmosis. Interestingly, this osmosis works both ways; alcohol and other components can get through the cork in the other direction, too, albeit in extremely small amounts. Over time these processes, in combination with ongoing biological and/or chemical shenanigans inside the bottle, can have a distinctly positive impact on the wine. Bitter-tasting tannins are broken down and softened, while high acidity dulls and mellows, allowing the sweeter-feeling, fuller fruit to come to the fore.
You may be wondering a couple of things at this point. Why is some wine made to age (kinda harsh and sour at first, requiring much patience before opening), while other wine must be consumed right away, and seems so darned easy to drink? Come to think of it, why the heck don’t they just make all wine immediately and deliciously drinkable? Good questions, all. Here we go.
There’s a regularly told trade story (it’s often heard this time of year) about a woman who comes into a wine shop asking to purchase a bottle of wine from this year’s vintage to honor the birth of her friend’s newborn, with the intention of opening the bottle on the tot’s twenty-first birthday. Well, first off, it’s 2008. I imagine you could get some decent 2008 whites starting around June, and they’ll be from South America, South Africa, New Zealand or Australia. Are they worth keeping for twenty-one years? I doubt it.
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