First Post - Why age certain wines?

Hi folks - just registered today. I've been lurking around the various wine web sites for a couple of years, and a topic just nagged at me enough to get me to finally register.

I've been drinking Bordeaux, some Burgundy & a little bit of various other things seriously for close to 30 years, and I can see the merits of proper cellaring and patience with the classic wines. What I don't quite get is the number of things I see about aging or drinking windows on the significantly more accessible wines that has them going the same kind of distance as say classed growth Bordeaux. Are we really expected to age plump Aussie Shiraz as if it is a structured Pauillac? Are Sancerre and Muscadet really worthy of the same cellar space as White Burgundy or German Riesling Auslese? Do these wines actually improve in the bottle over significant time?

I have to admit I have not experimented with aging things other than the traditional vins des gardes, so I would love to have some insight.

Thanks,
Doug

Welcome to the Debate!

On a more serious note, I would say the wine in question is more important than the general category. So to use your example, the Cotat Sancerres and some of the Excelsior Muscadets are surely worthy of more age than much basic Bourgogne blanc. But perhaps not as much as the top Montrachet. And obviously these are the exceptions within their categories.

Hi folks - just registered today. I've been lurking around the various wine web sites for a couple of years, and a topic just nagged at me enough to get me to finally register...

... Are we really expected to age plump Aussie Shiraz as if it is a structured Pauillac?

Welcome, Doug. Which of the wine sites you lurk on suggested a "plump Aussie Shiraz" should be aged like a "structured Pauillac"? I doubt it was WLDG.

Dave - using sites generically I also include some critical publications. Not necessarily implying any one particular site or person.

Rahsaan - not familiar with a producer by the name of Excelsior. Care to expand?

Rahsaan did a nice summary (Excelsior Clos de Noelles is the top Muscadet bottling from Luneau-Papin). These things are personal. I like the taste of great aged Muscadet (David B disagrees), but am less sure re even Cotat Sancerres (Vatan on the other hand.....). I've decided I prefer Priorat and CdP young, but only really care for Alsace Riesling and Musar with some age.

Rahsaan - not familiar with a producer by the name of Excelsior. Care to expand?

Semper Excelsior is a line of 'special' Muscadet from Luneau-Papin with extended lees aging and relatively-rich body for Muscadet. I believe there are versions from Clos de Poyet and Clos des Noelles, if not some other terroirs as well. If you do a search in the archives you should find plenty of notes on them as well as other Muscadet done in that style.

am less sure re even Cotat Sancerres...

I think the extent of aging can always be debated and I'll agree with the original point that these wines probably don't gain complexity over several decades like Montrachet or Wehlener Sonnenuhr from JJ Prum. But do you essentially treat the Cotat wines like any other good Sancerre and drink them fresh and young? Or might you give them a few years to develop more than the standard Sancerre?

But do you essentially treat the Cotat wines like any other good Sancerre and drink them fresh and young? Or might you give them a few years to develop more than the standard Sancerre?

I drink most Loire SB within year or two of release, like Cotat (and Dagueneau) best at maybe 5-8 years after vintage.

I drink most Loire SB within year or two of release, like Cotat (and Dagueneau) best at maybe 5-8 years after vintage.

I can see that.

[David M. Bueker]

Finally someone more on my side of the debate!

Seriously, there are a number of wines other than Bordeaux and Burgundy that I consider very age worthy. I note that Dale says he prefers Chateauneuf du Pape young. I tend to prefer it with 10-15 years of age.

Of course there is the whole issue of premature oxidation in White Burgundy these days, so if you are still putting away vintages of White Burg you would be well advised to check on them sooner rather than later.

I will temper my view on older Muscadet by saying I have yet to be served one that showed me it was worth the patience. There may be the bottle out there that will change my mind, but it will likely be the proverbial exception that proves the rule. My overall hang up with the aging idea is that if a very few (say a single handful) of wines from a certain region are worth aging there seems to be a segment of the population that then confers that virtue on a much broader range of products from the same region.

there seems to be a segment of the population that then confers that virtue on a much broader range of products from the same region.

Isn't that a bit of a straw man? Does anyone really argue that most Muscadet could/should be aged? Should the fact that many of us think Ch. Latour is best at 40+ mean that folks should age Mouton-Cadet?

Doug
Welcome.

To give a perspective on it... I'd say it boils down to what people like about aged wine and when the gains of further age are outweighed by the downsides.

This equation may vary person to person and indeed wine to wine.

A plump Aussie shiraz, the sort championed by certain US critics can indeed have questionable cellar potential - if they're soft, bold and approachable on release then that's possibly the time to drink them - and without a cellaring track record (as many lack, being devised in the last few years specifically for the US market), the benefits of cellaring aren't clear. However there are a huge range of Aussie wines that have wonderful cellaring history - like the old (30-40 year old) Lindemans Hunter Shiraz occasionally posted on here by David Lole. Like Hunter Semillons, Coonawarra Cabernet, etc. If you have a bottle of Penfolds Grange, will you drink it within 10 years? A bottle of Ch Pibran (Haut-Medoc) to be drunk after 20 years? What of Mas de Daumas Gassac? It's plump enough, but what from what I've tried has genuine interest with age.

I do think the way to make your own mind up, is to taste aged examples, ones where the track record is there and you get to see why other people age them. I personally find it very tough indeed to predict ageability from a blind tasting of a wine (no/short/medium/long cellar potential is about as detailed as I would feel happy with). Are they worth cellar space? Try them and see if they appeal to your tastes. If you like them then they're worth the space, if you don't then they're not! Also if you don't have the time or interest to see, when you're happy with the wines you do have, then they're also not worth the space.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Accessibility - this shouldn't preclude ageing IMO, but I have a belief that many do sacrifice ageability in favour of producing a wine that will be attractive on release (or in time for pre-release tastings). It's hard to be definitive on this as I'm not privy to the winemaker's thoughts & actions. Arguably Bordeaux is as vulnerable to this as anyone with it's too early tastings and the rise of the plump right-bankers & garagistes. A non-issue in Burgundy? Probably for the reds, though one wonders whether premox/p.ox in the whites might be in part due to winemaking changes to make the wines more accessible at a young age.

... but here's a surprising wine. Houghtons White classic / HWB. It's a cheap wine (~ $ Aus 8 ?) which is quite soft, fruity and pleasant on release (i.e. very accessible), and by all accounts most bottles will be drunk within days of being bought. Yet it has a really good track record of ageing well for 5-8+ years and the ones I've tried have developed surprising complexity and the best of them have been really very impressive. I doubt many would be able to call it's cellar potential when tasting blind.

What I'm trying to say is that by generalising, we risk missing great opportunities.

regards

Ian

Doug, welcome! Here is one well-known wine writers account of some aged Oz Rieslings. Enjoy! Oh, you have to scroll down a little.

http://www.wineanorak.com/australia/Lan ... esling.htm

[David M. Bueker]

Should the fact that many of us think Ch. Latour is best at 40+ mean that folks should age Mouton-Cadet?

That's taking the point further than I had intended it to go. Of course there's nothing better to start a fire than a straw man.

I can honestly see where products like the Excelsior wines that Rahsaan brought up (perhaps also the Granite de Clisson bottlings) might go longer than the norm. What I can't really fathom (based on what I have tasted) that it applies to even things like Pepiere's other bottlings. I actually have stashed away the better part of a case of the 2005 Briords for the specific purpose of checking on it every year or so from my cellar just to see if my experiences are due to poor cellaring/provenance and that there's something I am missing. I'm doing the same with several bottles of the 2005 Coudert Fleurie, as I haven't "seen the light" on aging Beaujolais either.

Of course I also have two bottles of the 2005 Briords stashed in less than ideal conditions for our little cellaring experiement. Can you believe the open date is now only about 6 months away?

Anyway, my overall contention is that the wines that are actually worth aging are an even smaller subset than we typically discuss. Even from the glacial cellar in my basement I have run across any number of major disappointments after just mid-term aging.

Doug

If you want to see how different wines mature, the best advice I can offer is to buy mature examples and see what you personally think. They can be tricky to find and, assuming you leave on the other side of the Atlantic from me, I am not the best one to advise how to set about it. However it is a lot more practical than stocking your cellar with cases of random wines and waiting for decades. Purchases of the less obvious candidates for aging can be risky, but the advantage is that they are also often cheap. In my experience such wines are usually drinakable, sometimes fantastic, but always interesting.

All - interesting discussion so far. Thanks for that.

Steve - it's not so much that I want to see how the wines age, but rather that I am sometimes shocked at the recommendations either for what I might consider overlong drinking windows or extreme optimism that a wine will markedly improve in bottle. So many wines are made to show well early that many times even an extra 2-3 years in the cellar seems to make little sense.

David,
looking forward to April Fools 2010
I personally like older Briords (and 15-20 yr old Luneau-Papin L'd'Or) but am ok with others not liking. I've had a couple older Beaujolais, I can see the comments re "pinotosity", but I like a bit younger. But still see the value in 5 years in cellar for more structured cru Bs.

David,
looking forward to April Fools 2010
I personally like older Briords (and 15-20 yr old Luneau-Papin L'd'Or) but am ok with others not liking. I've had a couple older Beaujolais, I can see the comments re "pinotosity", but I like a bit younger. But still see the value in 5 years in cellar for more structured cru Bs.

Jeez, imagine that, Dale: I'm going to agree with you! Aged Muscadet takes on a different flavor profile than the younger stuff, but so too does Chablis. I find the trajectories of the two wines quite similar, with the racy, taut profile of youth giving way to a rounder, richer wine. I can't say that I prefer either version, but I appreciate both. I've had the great opportunity to taste 20+ year-old Cru Beaujolais courtesy of a vigneron in Fleurie and then did get that "Pinosity" from it, but the reason I age some Cru Beaujolais is that it's too damn tannic and tight in its youth for me to enjoy. And there's also the "gee whiz" factor of losing track of a "simple" wine in your cellar and inadvertently aging it far longer than one would consciously do, only to find upon uncorking it that it's aged wonderfully.

Mark Lipton

Steve - it's not so much that I want to see how the wines age, but rather that I am sometimes shocked at the recommendations either for what I might consider overlong drinking windows or extreme optimism that a wine will markedly improve in bottle. So many wines are made to show well early that many times even an extra 2-3 years in the cellar seems to make little sense.

...but in the same way people have aged Bordeaux and Burgundy and discovered the charm of ageing, so have they done with other regions & grapes (picking some other French regions Bandol, Coteaux du Layon, Hermitage, C9dP, Champagne). Some of these Rhone wines an be pretty open on release and yet age well, ditto Sauternes.

That a wine is open and interesting on release doesn't preclude it from ageing, indeed some madmen here insist on drinking Barolo & Barbaresco on release

If you like it young, then it's then a good (and safe) time to drink it.
If you want to know how it ages, then grab an older bottle or take a punt. Just as you fairly point out that some critics give some overambitious windows for wines where there's no track record and questionable balance, others will give what might seem overlong drinking windows, but based on in-depth knowledge of previous vintages of that wine, or that of wines they consider to be of similar build, it's a very educated view. With some personal experience comes the ability to have a fair stab at it yourself. I reckon with 30 years of Bordeaux behind you, you'd be a pretty dab hand at judging potential of wines on release!

It's one reason I'd look to the opinions of Halliday or Hooke or Oliver (or others) in Australia, over critics who feel they can call it even without an in-depth knowledge of the region's wines. Experience matters and whilst mistakes will still be made, it's likely to be the rare exception that a wine is called as a 20+ year prospect, but falls over inside 3-4 years. Completely off-target drinking windows are more likely when:
a) The author has a limited experience with the region's wines (and specifically that label)
b) The wine is newly devised, with no track record

I suspect you're observing some of the above issues, but perhaps not seeing the wines that age with grace and charm, just as they have done for the last 10, 20, 30 or 40 years.

regards

Ian

[David M. Bueker]

And there's also the "gee whiz" factor of losing track of a "simple" wine in your cellar and inadvertently aging it far longer than one would consciously do, only to find upon uncorking it that it's aged wonderfully.

A wonder that will be very unlikely to happen to me due to my obsessive/compulsive cellar inventory. Maybe I should give up keeping track.

David
Sometimes also encountered at auction, where a mixed lot includes some potentially too old wines, but you were chasing the other bottles.
regards
Ian

[David M. Bueker]

I rarely if ever buy at auction. In fact I have done it once in 17 years of actively buying wine.