Jamie Goode: Ageing wine
By Jamie Goode, 4 February 2025
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One of the remarkable things about wine is the association that even normal people have with the fact that here we have a liquid that can age. And not just survive, but actually get better with age. Of course, we are familiar with the ethereal level of fine wine with deep underground cellars chock full of first-growth Bordeaux, top Burgundy and Vintage Port, to be sipped over black-tie dinners over long tables in country houses. But beyond that, the notion of the ageworthiness of wine has seeped into the consciousness of those with even a passing interest in wine. People understand that fancy wines age.
But once we unpack wine ageing a bit, we’ll see that this is not a simple subject. Not all wines are built for ageing, even wines from fancy regions in France. I remember a frustrated email a few years ago from a fine wine merchant telling customers that far too many of them were just leaving the wines they’d bought too long. People were buying cases of middling Bordeaux and then assuming that these wines would age 20 years, when many of them would be best popped before a decade. And when I started my newspaper column I used to get very sweet queries from readers who’d tucked a couple of bottles away under the stairs and then 30 years later wanted to know if they were worth anything on account of their age. I usually replied, you never know, they might just have developed in interesting ways, so open them and enjoy them, but have a reserve bottle handy in case they are over the hill.
Penfolds used to conduct regular rewards of patience tastings, where consumers were invited to bring along any old bottles of Grange, St Henri or Bin 389 along for them to be opened, assessed, and if they were in good nick, they’d be topped up and recorked with a certificate. If they weren’t, the cork would go back in, there’d be no new capsule, and the owners had the chance to taste disappointment with their dinner. In times gone by (before the mid-1990s), Grange wasn’t an expensive wine so lots of people might have a bottle or two lying around. How good they were depended on storage conditions as well as the cork lottery, and in Australia cooler areas generally fared better when ambient storage was bravely attempted.
Then we have the question of personal taste. Not all old wines taste of decay, but many do have some mature or tertiary notes: earth, spice, herbs, iron, blood, even malt and caramel (less desirable). And there are many wine drinkers who like their wines – even their fine wines – to still have fruit and vibrancy. I remember a wine-collecting restaurateur who said to me once, “You know, Jamie, I don’t really like old wines.” I actually do like old wines, and in particular ones where they have aged and developed mellow, harmonious flavours, as well as preserving characters that speak of their origin.
Because, dear reader, there is a point where old wines converge. Especially old red wines, but sometimes old whites, too. They end up tasting of old wine. They might be delicious, but you taste them and you think, this is a nice old wine. Is it Italian? French? Spanish? Australian? I can’t tell. I think for me it’s a shame that someone has gone to the bother of ageing wine, tying up capital, and then it has lost its sense of place.
In history, I suspect that most of the best wines were the youngest, freshest wines. It wasn’t until wines were bottled that unfortified wines could age. Wines taken from cask would have suffered the longer they’d been in a partially emptied cask. This is perhaps one reason why fortified wines were so prized, and especially fortified wines that were oxidative, such as Madeiras and Amontillado and Oloroso-style Sherries, as well as the many sweet Muscat fortified wines that dotted the Mediterranean islands.
Then when wines began to be bottled more often, and people had the option to cellar them at home, I suspect that older wines became more prized because they tasted nicer. The young wines would likely have been difficult and tannic, with high acidity, and quite a challenge. Ageing helped them, when the vintages were good.
This raises the question of whether age-worthy fine wines taste good all through their lives, or whether ageing is needed to make them taste their best. This is a challenging question to answer. I think that if a wine tastes delicious on release, then there is less to gain from the ageing process, and some of the steps that make young red wines delicious young might actually compromise the ageing potential of the wine.
There are lots of expensive red wines being made with polished tannins, a sweet profile and some new oak that are marketed in such a way that customers might expect to cellar them. Bordeaux has even made some wines like this, although it seems to be going less in this direction in recent vintages. Often the enologists wear suits, and paint the middle of their barrels red with wine, and they are not stacked, but laid on the floor of atmospheric, cathedral-like cellars. These wines impress young, but in terms of ageing, they are beginning to run out of runway for positive development. Yes, the tannins will continue to evolve, but they have already been polished in the winemaking process. There’s nothing wrong with that, but a combination of high alcohol from high-Brix-harvest and these tannins that have already done plenty of resolving usually mean that the wine has little to gain from cellaring, and will only further soften and develop without adding aromatic interest. They will just survive.
The old vintages of red wines that thrill us in their maturity now, would have tasted quite different to the big high-point scoring, critic-wooing wines of today. Now there’s nothing wrong with making wines that taste great on release and don’t really have much to gain from ageing, but you sort of have to let your customers know. And let’s not pretend that most of the fine wines of today are exactly corresponding to their counterparts from 30-40 years ago.
- Jamie Goode is a London-based wine writer, lecturer, wine judge and book author. With a PhD in plant biology, he worked as a science editor, before starting wineanorak.com, one of the world’s most popular wine websites.
Mark Hallett | 10 February 2025
What a great article on the relative benefits of aging wine and how the practice has developed over time. As ever, Jamie demonstrates a deep and inate understanding of the many nuances of wines from around the world and across the price ranges.
GillesP | 4 February 2025
It’s often a bit of a lottery, but basic common senses still apply and works in most occasions. Top end red wines gives very little if anything in their infency. Whites I find nowadays even top appellations or producers are not build for ageing too long.
Kwispedoor | 4 February 2025
I can’t agree more, Jamie. Especially with your last paragraph. Back in the day, winemakers would proudly proclaim that a wine wasn’t ready to drink, and that you should first age it for many years. Nowadays, everyone wants their bread buttered on both sides. So now we’re sold expensive wines with high ripeness and pH levels, no filtration and scant sulphur, while being told the wine will age well. Many of them just don’t. And it’s one thing if a wine loses its sense of place with time in the bottle, but losing its stability (developing elevated brett, VA, etc.) is quite another…