How to Appreciate Older Vintage Wine
by Denny Wang
Published by Clark Philippines on October 09, 2009
The ability of fine wine to improve with age separates it from the rest of the field. Beers (except for bottle-conditioned Vintage Beers), Whiskey and Brandy for example stabilize once they are bottled and do not improve anymore. Wine has this uncanny ability, instinct even, to develop character and complexity inside the bottle.
The time element adds a totally new dimension to the game. A 1986 Chateau Lafite is a totally different work of art in 2002, 2022 and 2042. The same wine will look, smell and taste differently at different stages and each is very rewarding, utterly disarming and thoroughly entertaining in their own different ways.
This X factor means a great deal to a wine lover especially if he is also a collector. His 24 bottles of 1986 Lafite resting in his cellars since 1990 will not only continue to give him great pleasures for probably for the rest of his life but it will perform differently each time a bottle is opened at a different point in the future.
To professionals like sommeliers and restaurateurs, the variation gives them a powerful tool to enhance the performance of their products and services. Sommeliers for example can recommend a much more accurate pairing for not a certain dish but the specific way – the doneness of a steak for example – he/she prefers the dish to be prepared. For those who prefer their red meat rare, an older vintage is much more suitable because of the lower tannins and more integrated flavors in the older wines.
Time is not a cure for faults in wine. An ordinary wine doesn’t become great simply because of age. Bad wines get worse with time and are best drunk as young as possible, or better still, avoided altogether. A good wine certainly needs many years in the bottle to slowly develop and evolve before all its virtues surfaces. Drinking wine that is too young deprives you of enjoying it at its best.
A good wine goes through three fairly distinct phases in its lifetime. In the first few years after bottling, almost all goes into an ugly duckling stage called “reduction” when all its qualities are reduced in stature, making the wine feel numb, flat and boring. This can last 2 to 5 years.
After that, the wine opens up and exudes youthful charms, brightness in its aromas and flavors which are called “primary qualities”. These qualities stand out individually as if competing for attention, almost like singers in a variety show each doing a song-and-dance routine except in wine this happens all at the same time. Bright fruit flavors like cherries, raspberries and blackcurrants are clearly discernible in red wines. In many ways this is very appealing and quite attractive especially to the palate of a novice. Some connoisseurs might find it too “noisy” and diffused, preferring something more integrated and organized. For that, this fastidious lot will have to wait a bit longer because a wine can play in this sandbox for 5 to 10 years.
Once the wine gets to the next (3rd) plateau, it becomes a totally different kettle of fish. Primary features now give way to much more complex aromas and flavors. The aromas combine into a bouquet of fruit and flowers. On the palate, individual flavors no longer hit us from everywhere. They blend into something complex. Obtrusive elements like tannins have been “resolved”. Flavors have now fused together, a bit similar to braising in food doesn’t it? These are tertiary qualities that really epitomize the wonders of wine being a living thing. To many, it is worth the wait.
Then once in a (long) while, along comes a superstar. These rare bottles seem to be ageless. They reach that illusive 4th plateau. I would venture a guess that there might be about 50 to 100 of these in the last century. This might sound like a lot but it’s less than 0.001% of the lot. I can mention a few of them off the top of my head,: 1947 Ch. Cheval-Blanc, 1900 Ch. Margaux, 1974 Heitz Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley, 1961 Ch. Latour, 1945 Ch, Mouton-Rothschild and 1969 Romanee-Conti. I am very fortunate to have tasted a few of these. For the rest of the bottles that I haven’t encountered, I am almost content to take the word of the more fortunate.
Longevity and its eventual greatness are not necessarily a game of chance and luck. Each producer makes a strategic decision – within certain constraints imposed by the quality of the growing seasons and prevailing economic conditions – on a thing called the “drinking window”. Drinking window is the range of time into the future that the wine is expected to be delivering its optimal pleasures. Techniques in wine making can dramatically shift the drinking window. Examples of these techniques are:
Extent of maceration
Application of pump-over or push-down affects extraction
Length of barrel ageing
Enhanced oxygenation (although it is heated argued that MO – Micro Oxygenation – does not displace the drinking window but that remains to be proven.
Even back in the vineyards where everything looks so innocent, certain things like pruning, green harvesting, irrigation and night harvesting can be done before the harvest that will already shape the personality of the grapes and affect the destiny of the wine. Things like skin-to-juice ratios and sugar ripeness can easily be tampered with. In short, the longevity of a wine is not necessarily an issue of nature or terroir. Even the method of pressing has a serious impact on this issue. Human intervention is at least 50% guilty as charged. Some are even proud of it.
When buying older vintages please be mindful of these matters:
The wine might have thrown considerable amount of sediments which are disturbed when the bottles travel from shop to its next destination. Give it some time for the sediments to settle back into the bottom before opening it for consumption. The best way is to let the bottle stand vertical for a few days and then lay it down on its belly with a slight inclination after that.
Although it is true for all wine that sunlight and excessively high temperatures can cause irreparable damages, older vintage wines are much more sensitive and its defense much weaker than young bottles.
There is nothing wrong with storing your wines in your home refrigerator. Cold temperature impedes growth but that’s not terribly important for matured old bottles anymore.
Knowing what to look for is quintessential to the appreciation of life’s finer offerings. Here are some tips on how wine lovers appreciate their older vintage wine:
The “primary” flavors and aromas of a wine when young are usually characterized with food and herb analogies. With age, wine sheds those features and replaces them with tertiary flavors that are far more complex and less easy to describe. That’s why the term “bouquet” is used instead of aromas when describing the smell of older wines.
Two components tend to stand out in old wines – oak and acid. These features are not created by age. They’ve always been there since the beginning. They were just masked by the wine’s abundant fruitiness and tannic astringency in youth. In general, the older the wines, the lower should be their serving temperatures. For example, serving a 1970 red wine from Burgundy or Bordeaux at 10-12C is perfectly reasonable.
The power and robust personalities of young wine appeal to us in a way that is very different from how elegance, harmony of balance and serenity of older vintage wines mesmerize all our senses.
It is important to acknowledge that this is a business of personal taste. And even for a given person, this taste varies a bit from day to day. Many people prefer the primary fruit flavors of a younger vintage. They might consider a 3rd plateau wine to be over the hill. Others might find a 15-year-old difficult to handle with too many rough edges to navigate around. I have heard and even been dragged into far too many futile debates over which is better, old or young. I have long conceded that the winner is one who can love both equally.
Indeed, the older a bottle of wine, the higher is the risk of it being either over-the-hill or its quality compromised. No one can guarantee the quality of the wine inside a sealed bottle nor can anyone accurately predict exactly when a bottle reaches what stage of its prime. Whether uncertainty and an element of risk add to the excitement of the game is a matter of views, attitudes and opinions.
The appreciation of old wines is certainly an acquired taste but it is a thing that all wine lovers want to pursue if they any serious about wine at all. But I would be remiss of my duties if I didn’t put forth this warning that after you have acquired that taste, you and your wine collection might never be same ever again.
I hope that these words serve their purposes of helping you obtain more pleasures from older vintage wines. If you have any questions or comments, please email them to Wine@Yats-International.com. And if you need help finding older bottles, log on to www.YatsWineCellars.com to check out the selection at your leisure.
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