Talk-A-Vino

Wine is better with age.

No, it is not a universal truth, but lots and lots of wines improve with age.

“Improve” might not even be the right term.

When we put the wine into the cellar (whatever your cellar looks like, as long as it is not a shelf next to your stove which you use every day), the wine starts changing. This is what we call aging. Nobody knows how the wine is changing, how fast, and what this change entails. For the optimists wine enthusiasts like myself, the hope is that wine is evolving, becoming better, and ultimately, delivering more pleasure than it did upon release.

The evolution of the wine, when it actually happens, is not endless. “Whatever goes up will come down”. This is why wine lovers use an important jargon word: “peak”. The wine at its peak delivers the most pleasure one can wish for. Again, nobody knows when the wine reaches its peak, and for how long that peak will last. That is what makes wine amazing – when you open a bottle, you have no idea what you will find inside. An equal opportunity for joy and disappointment before the cork is pulled – the mystery of wine.

Not all wines will improve with age. And when you taste the wine young, upon release, you still don’t know how well the wine will age or whether it will age at all. Yes, everybody can make a guess. Supposedly, wine critics and wine makers are better at guessing the expected lifespan of the wine, including its peak and “past prime” – another important jargon word for the wine that went into decline and now offers less pleasure than it did “at a peak”.

Remember: wine is subjective. Every wine drinker can tell their story, and nobody can tell them that they are wrong.

What prompted this reflection on the wine aging?

A bottle of Portuguese wine, 2013 Enoport Tonel 22 Reserva Douro (13% ABV, 35% Touriga Nacional, 35% Tinta Roriz, 30% Touriga Franca).

I scored 4 bottles of this wine back in 2017 at Wine Till Sold Out (WTSO) for $10.99 each. I tasted the wine through the years, and honestly, it was not really working for me. It was tight, dense, and closed, not offering layers of pleasure as Douro Reserva reds can do, like this 2009 Casa Burmester. Until now.

This was the last bottle (of course :)) and I pulled it out without much hope or expectation – “hmm, let’s see how this is”. Boy, what a pleasure I walked into…

The seduction started with the smell, offering ripe cherries and cassis, with a whiff of the cigar box. The palate followed, voluptuous, layered, generous, and perfectly balanced, with perfectly integrated tannins offering a light tingling and lots of pleasure. A delight (9-).

If someone were to write a textbook for wine lovers “How to enjoy wine”, this wine would be a perfect textbook study, hitting all the important checkmarks:

• Patience is rewarded
• Wine is better with age
• Price is not an indicator of quality and doesn’t predict the ageability of the wine

$10.99. 7 years in the cellar. Lots and lots of pleasure.

A Beauty of Age.

What’s your story?