Editorial: Why wine maturation windows are problematic

By , 4 February 2025

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Lunch wines at this year’s Hemel-en-Aarde Celebration of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay – good for another 10 years?

At the recent Celebration of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay hosted by Hemel-en-Aarde Wines, one of the masterclasses involved a flight entitled “Golden Years: Chardonnay Through the Ages” consisting of Restless River Ava Marie 2013, Hasher Marimist 2020, Creation Art of 2018, Cap Maritime 2017, Spookfontein 2018, and La Vierge Apogée 2019.

Craig Wessels of Restless River was presenting, and with just a little innuendo, asked the audience, “Who prefers ‘em young and who prefers ‘em old?” Those assembled were divided in their response, one gentleman compelled to say that vinous nirvana was surely to drink a wine at precisely the peak of its maturation curve…

Wine enthusiasts often seek guidance on the optimal drinking window for a bottle. Producers and critics are then compelled to provide estimates on when a wine will be at its ultimate, but these recommendations are far from exact. Wine ageing is not a perfect science; rather, it is a dynamic interplay of chemistry, storage conditions, and personal preference. While a well-aged wine can offer complexity and nuance, young wines have their own vibrancy and excitement. The notion of a singular “best” time to drink a wine is, in many ways, misleading.

Producers and critics often assign maturation windows to wines, suggesting that a certain bottle should be opened between, say, 2028 and 2040. While these recommendations can be useful as a general guide, they fail to account for numerous variables that affect how a wine matures.

Firstly, storage conditions play a significant role. The same bottle aged in a temperature-controlled cellar at 12°C will evolve differently from one kept in a home wine rack at fluctuating room temperatures. Bottle orientation, humidity and light exposure can also influence how a wine develops. Even within the same case of wine, slight differences in cork quality can lead to divergent ageing trajectories.

Secondly, personal taste is often ignored in these prescribed drinking windows. Some wine lovers cherish the primacy of fruit that wines have in their youth, while others prefer the tertiary aromas and softened structure of an older vintage. In this regard, I’ll always remember Paul Boutinot, founder of Waterkloof in Somerset West, calling himself an “impatient” wine drinker – he liked his wines young, when they were still a bit tight and needed some effort to fully appreciate. I tend to concur: young wines leave you wondering where they might end up, whereas older wines often only provide a sense of regret as to what might have been.

Another consideration to bear in mind is that bottle ageing is not a linear progression. Wines can go through awkward periods where their elements seem disjointed before emerging in a more harmonious state. This phenomenon, known as a “dumb phase,” complicates the idea of a perfect drinking window. A wine that tastes closed or unexpressive at a given moment may bloom with additional time.

Expanding on the above, the notion of a fixed window does not account for how wines can evolve in unpredictable ways. Frankly, most wines decline rapidly after a certain point but some wines plateau and hold their charm for years. A general guideline may suggest a wine should be enjoyed by 2035, but an exceptionally stored bottle might still offer delight well beyond that. Conversely, wines expected to age for decades sometimes lose their character rather sooner than expected, the ambitious local reds of the 2000s a case in point.

What, ultimately, are we hoping for when we mature wine? Essentially, we want the wine, both as agricultural product and cultural artefact, to resist the erosive effects of time. Inherently, the ageing process is driven by a complex interplay of chemical transformations: primary aromas gradually give way to more evolved notes, tannins polymerize to create a softer texture, and as fruit fades, acidity and alcohol become more pronounced, reshaping our perception of balance.

Drinking aged wines is therefore a contemplative experience. We recognise that maturation is essentially a process of decline but during that process, we hold the desire that the wine will first become more pleasurable and more interesting to drink, before it sooner or later loses all charm and eventually dies.

For me, then, a great source of thrill and enjoyment is when a wine appears more youthful than it might reasonably be expected to. And such a moment occurred at the Hemel-en-Aarde celebration. As a broadly accurate guide, I’m inclined to recommend that South African white wines should be drunk within six to eight years of vintage, but Wessels of Restless River was confident enough to pour his 2013 and how extraordinarily intact it was.

This, ultimately, is why maturation windows remain so problematic—they attempt to impose a rigid timeline on something inherently irregular. Rather than adhering too strictly to prescribed drinking dates, the true joy of wine lies in discovery: opening a bottle at just the right moment, even if this is only by happy accident.

  • How are the famous 2015s looking 10 years on from vintage? Entries for the 10-Year-Old Wine Report are now open – see here.

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3 comment(s)

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    Timothy Conn | 4 February 2025

    On a recent trip in Gran Canaria we stumbled upon some aged SA Chardonnay in a supermarket: 2013 Jordan 9 yards & 2008 Bouchard Finlayson Kaaimansgat. We bought the Jordan but I wasn’t quite prepared to risk the other (especially due to some ambitious pricing, perhaps explaining why it had sat on the shelf all those years).
    The Jordan was under screwcap which could have helped and it was a delicious drop, even improving the next day. No opulent fruit, nor bountiful tertiary aromas: just well balanced, delicious and long. A real treat to try something aged that long.

      Richard Gundersen | 4 February 2025

      Timothy, those experiences are so special. I’m a big advocate for aging wines. I also enjoy providing feedback to the producers, their responses are often heart-warming.

    Jos | 4 February 2025

    Should it then not be looked through the producer lens? SA producers do not quite have the track record of French producers, but surely at some point you can confidently say that X producer’s chardonnay (or whatever), which you are reviewing, has shown to be particularly age worthy.

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