Age discrimination

Wine that's worth waiting for

Uncorked by Thor Iverson

Two weeks ago I wrote about old wines: what they taste like and where to find them. I ended with some homework: pick up a few bottles to see if you're into the complex, magical taste of mature wine.

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If you did try a few bottles, or if you already know you like the taste of mature wines, the next questions are purely practical: Which young wines have a bright future? How can you identify and store them? And when should you drink them?

The answer is different for every wine, but there are some general principles. Age-worthy reds will have enough tannin and acidity to provide structure, and enough fruit to develop and change. In whites, tannin is less important; acidity is crucial. Sweet wines must have good acidity. But the most crucial element for any wine is balance: no ingredient should overwhelm (or be overwhelmed by) the others. If the tannins are huge, the fruit should be huge as well; an unbalanced wine will age, but it will age badly, and will be even less drinkable old than it was young.

Bordeaux: Reds usually need five years, but can easily age 25 years or more. Whites need at least five. Sauternes can be practically ageless, but 20 to 40 years is a good range. Burgundy: All depends on the vineyard. Reds age one to 15 years. Whites need two to 10, and top wines are wasted if consumed young. Extremely susceptible to bad storage. Alsace: Under $15, drink young. Over $15, especially riesling, up to a decade or more. Rhône: Hermitage, Côte-Rôtie, and Cornas reds need at least a decade. Other reds, three to five years (or more). Whites can be exceedingly closed for up to 10 years, though Condrieu should be consumed very early. Loire: Reds require five to 15 years; whites from Savennières and Vouvray age 10 years or more. Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé can sometimes age, but Muscadet is usually best young. Sweet wines are 20-plus agers. Champagne: Vintage Champagne needs 10 years; all else is drinkable at any time. Southern France: Appellation-labeled wine (Bandol, Minervois, Cahors) can age for many years. Varietally-labeled wine (merlot, etc.) is for early drinking. Piedmont: Barolo and Barbaresco may outlive all of us; Barbera and Dolcetto are delicious young but age for about five years. Tuscany: Top Chianti Classico Riserva and Brunello age five to 25 years; most else is best in its youth. Other Italian regions: Taurasi, Amarone, and wines from Trentino-Alto Adige/Friuli can age for five to 20 years. Otherwise, there's great variety in aging potential. Germany and Austria: Effortless agers, whether dry or sweet. Cheapies need five years, and sweet versions (like Beerenauslese) are retirement wines. Spain: Reds from the Ribera and Priorat, five to 10 years. Red and white Riojas are often aged before sale, but can also last. Whites should be consumed young. Portugal: Dry reds and whites are for early drinking. Port can be consumed anytime, but vintage Port will outlast your grandchildren. California and Oregon: Only a very few top cabernets, merlots, and pinot noirs will get better with age. Zin, unless very tannic, should be drunk young. Ditto chardonnay. Washington: Tannic cabs and merlots age five to 10 years. Everything else, drink up. Australia and New Zealand: Shiraz ages five to 15 years, cabernet five to 10. New Zealand sauvignon blancs and pinot noirs can age five years, but are often best young. All else is for early drinking. Other Southern Hemisphere: South African pinotage needs five years, and a few Argentinean malbecs need the same. All else should be consumed early.

With practice, you'll be able to identify (by taste) wines worth laying down for a few years. But if you're unsure, consult the experts (Robert M. Parker Jr., for example, or a specialized journal such as the Wine Spectator) for information on specific wines. As for vintage charts (which often include aging predictions), they're overgeneralized and fraught with peril. However, there is some basic information that can be gleaned from such charts, so I'm including a vintageless regional guide (right). Please remember that these are only general suggestions, not ironclad rules. The producer, vintage, and vineyard all affect a wine's aging potential, and there's no substitute for actually tasting the wine. In fact, more wines probably break these aging rules than follow them.

The best way to get a handle on how wines age is to buy several bottles of the same wine and open them over a period of years. You'll identify the early fruitiness, the closed stage (if any), peak maturity, and even the slow downslide (if you still have any of the wine left).

Here are several wines worth laying down for a while:

1995 Domaine Tempier Bandol ($19.99). A Provençal red that needs years of age to strut its stuff. Right now, it's lead pencil, cedar, tobacco, black pepper, and cassis wound up in a tight ball. Many hours of air reveal some meatier flavors, but come back in 10 years to see what this wine's all about.

1996 Domaine d'Andézon Côtes-du-Rhône ($9.99). Spicy berries, plum, prune, a little earth . . . and throwing tons of sediment already. This young monster needs to be put to bed for a few years, after which it will be the perfect foil for any sort of roasted meat or game.

1995 Château la Cardonne (Mêdoc) ($18). Pretty tight and austere, with soft cassis and herbal flavors drifting along a leathery texture. A big explosion of blueberry and licorice on the finish suggests that this wine will be much better in 2005.

1990 Bollinger Grande Année ($65). The best vintage Champagne I've tasted this year. Massive, with dark and almost meaty tones that grace a broodingly fruity palate, and the flavor lingers until you put something else in your mouth. About to close down until 2010 or so.

One final note: with mature vintages available at many wine shops, you might wonder why you should bother aging your own wine at all. There are a few good reasons. First, limited supply and hyped-up demand mean that many wines with good aging potential are impossible to find even a few weeks after release. And when those wines do reappear, it's usually at a hefty premium. Second, but just as important, aging wine gives you control over a wine's storage conditions. As I've noted before, indifferent importers, distributors, and retailers can do a lot of damage to wine. And the longer a wine's been subjected to bad storage, the greater the chance that it's been damaged or destroyed.

Good storage conditions mean a consistent temperature in the 50-63° range, moderately high humidity (if possible), no vibration, and no bright lights. The options for achieving this are myriad -- and a topic for another column -- but a visit to a wine shop or a glance at the ads in most wine magazines will give you some ideas.

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@phx.com.

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