17 Apr How Much will Wine Improve in the Bottle?
We would like to bust a myth here- If truth be told; most standard wines will not improve, with age and should be drunk within a couple of years- only the world’s finest wines benefit from aging. A lot of wine is now produced for immediate drinking and that is not the kind of wine you should be bothered with storing for years. But if you are buying fine wines and planning on storing them, it’s still important to know which ones will mellow and taste better with age.
Local against Premium
Today, it’s possible for you to get the world’s top stuff in many wine stores across Australia. But the one thing to keep in mind is that if it has a screw cap, its best to drink it right away. Some recent information has indicated that even wine with screw caps ages as well as a wine with a cork. However, the industry is not 100% sure about whether this is true or not. The best way out of this quandary is to consume the local ones faster and store the more premium ones in your cellar for a longer period of time.
Its best to drink white wines from Australia, South America and the U.S, right away; but a number of French wines will improve or change with age. Though champagne can also age for a very long time, it can easily be consumed when you buy it. It’s the same with any other sparkling wine. In most cases, unless a person is a true connoisseur or collector, he or she will not wait too long to consume a wine they have purchased. They are not too concerned with the subtleties of the wine, its flavor and bouquet (which tend to develop over time in a much better way).
Red Wines
Generally, red wines are considered to be much better candidates when it comes to aging. If you find it too confusing to decide which wine should be aged and which shouldn’t – the simple rule of thumb to keep in mind is that a wine which is more expensive is the one that will age better. Most European reds will improve with age much better than red wines from the U.S. Another general rule is that the lighter your wines, the sooner you consume them.
The balance & structure of a wine determine how well it will age. Its ingredients such as acid, alcohol, tannin & fruit are the factors that determine whether a wine will improve in texture and flavor over time.
If you have a red wine with a lot of fruit gobs in it, but very little acid or tannin, it’s best not to bother with aging it. It’s just not worth the effort. However, this does not mean you will not be able to store the wine for a couple of years. You can and should store it in a custom designed temperature-controlled cellar (to maintain its quality), but it’s just not going to get any better
The Right Flavour
If you are a serious collector and are planning on laying down (aging) some wine, you will have to be patient, be willing to invest a significant amount of money and need a certain amount of will power too. What you need to keep in mind is that when you invest in good wine, you need to be sure you have the right kind of storage for it. That’s the only way you can be assured that your reds, whites and sparkling wines stay in peak condition and age as they should.
Contact the Experts
It would be a good idea to decide who much wine you want to stock and how much of that will have to be aged. Investing in a temperature-controlled custom designed wine cellar is the one way of ensuring that all your precious wines are stored at the right angle, in the right temperature and light conditions. For more information about the best ways to store wines, call Signature Cellars on 02 9340 7515. We are the residential wine cellar specialists. You can also use this contact form to get in touch with us.
Thanks for reading,
Neil Smallman
Signature Cellars
02 9340 7515
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