158.93.6.11
In Reply to: RE: When should you lay down wine? posted by jimbill on February 04, 2010 at 19:35:31
I've been hanging around the Asylum for years, and never knew there was a wine board. Hope you don't mind if my first ever post in this corner of the Asylum is your thread.
I'll agree with your points totally. The majority of New World wines are intended to be enjoyed within a couple of years of release. There is no rationale for aging them. In fact, they are unlikely to improve with age.
The trick is knowing which wines will improve with age, and the kinds of changes that can occur if a wine is held at appropriate temperature for 5-10 years or more. These changes will not be for the better for most everyday drinking wines. But for wines that are actually built to age, the changes can be remarkable and the resulting wine sublime.
Although I'll agree that a lot of fruit-forward wines will never improve with age, I have had 20 year old Zin, 30 year old pinot, and 20 year old California chardonnay that would blow your socks off. So, it's not just the grape, it is the quality of the original fruit and the expertise of the winemaking that determine age-worthiness. Cost is not always a good indicator of age-ability. Some expensive wines do not age well and were never intended to age. Some relatively inexpensive wines actually do improve with age.
However, one issue you did not mention is that aging wine properly has certain costs that people often do not consider. The cost of equipment, space, electricity and monetary investment in the wines themselves are often overlooked. These expenses can easily double or triple the amount spent on the original wine. That kind of cost should be balanced against the cost of the same wine bought 10-20 years later at auction or from a fine wine retailer. What one often finds is that, when looked at in strictly monetary terms, it only makes sense to cellar wine if it is within the context of an ongoing program that accounts for a certain volume added and withdrawn annually over decades.
Of course, for those with disposable income and patience, spending money on wine is rather like investing in good audio equipment. There is a payoff in pleasure that is hard to quantify.
"Life without music is a mistake" (Nietzsche)
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