Tim James: Growing older, drinking differently

We know about old vines and old wines – and their age makes a difference. But what about old wine-drinkers? Does age bring changes, for better or worse, in taste-experiences and preferences? It was a question that the American winewriter and -importer Terry Theise raised in the latest issue of World of Fine Wine, prompted by his own experience (he didn’t announce it there, but tells me he’s 73). This led to wondering about physical changes that might prompt changes in taste: a supposed reduction in acuity, for example; and he mentioned the presumably hormonal changes in older women – but I guess those in men might also be expected to have consequences.

Theise was surprised, however, to find that most of the small handful of wine-professional friends and colleagues he consulted reported no significant patterns of change in their wine-tastes.

I too am surprised. Easy continuity is not my own experience, whatever the causes of my shifts. Given that I’ve noticeably changed my tastes in various aesthetic areas that are important to me, why not my wine-drinking? These days I seldom read novels, for example, and novel-reading was a defining factor of my life for decades, professional and personal. Overall I now read less than I used to, and it’s usually re-reading rather than anything new, and more often than not it’s non-fiction. My musical tastes have shifted too: it’s still all “classical”, but I can’t easily recall how much I used to love Italian opera (mostly unspeakably silly stuff, I now think, though often kitschly beautiful); and generally I have moved in both temporal directions away from the lushness of nineteenth-century Romanticism.

So, again, why not changes in my tastes in wine as I’ve got older? I’m now 71, having begun a more-or-less serious relationship with wine only in my latter 30s. I don’t think these changes are all obviously ascribable to bodily changes any more than are my shifts in musical and literary tastes … but, yes, maybe some. I have certainly had a general reduction in my taste for sweet foods and drinks in the last decade or two, and that is plausibly related to bodily changes. So my beloved older-style German rieslings often seem too sweet and I would reluctantly admit to, on the whole, preferring drier ones.

When acidity loses its appeal

This is something that Terry Theise strongly notices too. Interestingly (given the high acidity in the best of those sweet rieslings) he also notes a change that he says is more age-typical: a resistance to very high acidity in wines, a character he used to relish. I hadn’t thought of that for myself, but I think it applies. It would help explain why at tastings I seem to object more than my younger colleagues to the “hipster” style of lowish-alcohol, ultra-fresh wines, both white and red, and tend to find them unbalanced and even aggressive in their acidity.

Taking this further, I wonder if this also accounts for my mild turn in the last decade or so away from the red burgundies and local pinot noirs that I previously enjoyed so much more. I’ve returned more , in fact, to an earlier love: cabernet sauvignon-based blends – especially from Bordeaux, especially the dark-fruited, savoury, tannic and “sinister” ones that hark back to pre-1982 times (but seldom South African examples, which I can admire theoretically occasionally, but seldom love, because they are that bit too sunny and friendly, even when not too ripe and powerful). Tannin, then, suits me now more than acidity, it seems.

The pleasures of caring less

As to a decline in acuity – well, I don’t think I’ve ever been acute as a taster, nor have I aspired to become more so, though I realise that this might seem odd for someone who, for example, tasted and rated for the annual Platter’s Guide for two decades. Aiming for the finest, geekiest discrimination has never interested me nearly as much as other aspects of wine (social, historical, cultural, agricultural) – even less now. Decades back, I got through giving up smoking cigarettes without being aware that it made much difference to my palate. Having now joyfully abandoned writing more than the briefest of tasting notes has been an enormous liberation. (I can’t say I frequently read others’ notes either.) It’s very possible that this liberation has itself positively affected the way I enjoy wine in all circumstances: an aura of anxiousness – coming from a sense of responsibility and of my likely inadequacy – doesn’t cloud the pleasure.

There’s much less detail that I’m concerned with these days, Possibly that marks a decline. But I read, just this morning over my toast and marmalade, this apposite line from Montaigne about the comfort he finds in old age, in an essay entitled “All things have their season”:  “that it deadens in me many desires and cares by which life is troubled”, including “care for knowledge”. There’s so much about the vast world of wine that I no longer feel curious about, as I did when I would read the Oxford Companion to Wine cover to cover. That reduction in interest is more of an admission, I suppose, than a boast.

Some changes in my tastes – as reflected in my drinking practices – are clearly not so much so much about ageing as about my growing older in a particular place and time. I’ve had a good few decades chronicling – and drinking – the Cape wine revolution. South African fine white wine is, widely, a miraculously delicate, not to mention delicious, expression of its origins. In response, I now drink nearly as much white wine as red, and that’s a notable shift. As all wine gets more expensive, local and foreign, and I don’t get richer, it suits me well to buy and drink for my pleasure lots of Cape white, and little foreign white apart from sherry and what good German riesling I can afford.

As for the local reds, I prefer the Rhône-style ones, based on syrah or grenache – the whole range of them, including the lighter, fresher ones (but not too light) with no new oak. There’s another change, I think: I now get more pleasure than before from comparatively simple, fairly young wines. I don’t think I’d even want to drink only fine, mature, serious wines, even as an aspiration. Perhaps it’s a sign of greater tolerance.

Something else. I’ve always had a particular passion for fortified wine: sherry, port, madeira. But now, along with drinking some younger, lighter wines, I also go to the opposite extreme and drink a good amount of brandy. I seem to like that kick at the end of the day. My total alcohol consumption has probably declined a little in the last decade, but the proportion of the alcohol intake provided by brandy has increased.

That’s a change in my drinking habits that I am at a total loss to explain. The great revolutionary Leon Trotsky once said that “’Old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a man.” That’s true, I think, and many of the details of the process are just as surprising.

• Tim James is one of South Africa’s leading wine commentators, contributing to various local and international wine publications. His book Wines of the New South Africa – Tradition and Revolution appeared in 2013.