HOW WINES AGE
This, you won’t believe. But it’s true.
Between 90-93 percent of all wine produced on the globe in a given year is consumed before the following harvest. The idea of aging wine—in a wine cellar or for future use or enjoyment—is simply foreign to most people on the planet.
That is a difficult statistic for an American to swallow, for nearly all the everyday wine we buy is more than (at least) one year’s age.
Yet a good number of us do age wine, in our basements or cellars, a lot longer than the time it takes to drive from our wine shop to our dinner table.
And to what end?
The only reason to age any wine is to experience its greater value, whether because it is rarer and more dear (good for investors in wine) or because it has changed “for the better”—gained complexity or softened its tannic grip or developed tertiary aromas and flavors. That doesn’t happen on the mere ride home.
It wasn’t until relatively recently, actually, that wines could be aged well at all. Until then, bottles were oddly shaped and unable to be laid down in order to keep the cork stopper turgid, thereby to seal the wine against the spoilage wrought by air. Widespread cellaring of wine would occur only until after 1830, when the English perfected the blowing of straight-sided glass bottles. (In short order, winemakers also began to fashion wines that then could be aged. Previously, most wines were made to be consumed within the year.)
Looked at one way, most of the better reds wines of the globe arrive at our doors already aged: they’ve spent 1-2 years at the winery, generally in oak casks, before being bottled for shipment.
What happens during bottle aging at your place, however, is crucial to getting a wine “to be better.” Furthermore, the conditions under which the bottles are held are crucial. (See below.)
Now, for a bit of science to explain what happens during the aging of wine and, with it, the rude realization that, for all its romance, a wine cellar is about mere chemicals, ions, esters and pigments.
Over time and in the presence of oxygen—even that miniscule amount that is locked into a wine on bottling—red wine’s tannins gather into each other and “polymerize” or “plasticize.” Young, short-chain, aggressive tannins collect into long-chain, thicker tannins that simply are not perceptible to the wee tactile receptors inside the mouth. They then appear “smooth.” Ditto for pigmenting compounds called anthocyans. Also, as such tannins and colors become heavy, they precipitate as “sediment,” which is why older red wines often must be decanted to render them clear.
Also, as a function of the trio of oxygen, acids and glucose in a wine, each aging in each other’s neighborhood, tertiary aromas and flavors develop that are over and above those that are primary (from the grape variety) or secondary (from the winemaking process). The redolent aroma of a moist forest floor in older pinot noir, for example, or the saddle leather or cedar-y sniffs of aged cabernet sauvignon wouldn’t occur were the wine not at least 7-10 years older than the day it was bottled.
In totally scientific terms, this is the process of the oxidation of wine’s various aldehydes (compounds chemically between alcohols and organic acids). That oxidation produces esters, wine’s many possible perfumes.
Several elements conspire to assist especially red wines (but also some whites) to age longer and become “better.” Acidity is key. Flat wines cannot stay the course. Sweetness is helpful, just as Granny’s canned peaches are preserved due to sugar.
Added alcohol makes for long-lived wine (the best example is Port, which is also sweet). Even baking or cooking a wine—strange as that seems—mummifies the wine Madeira into its greatness as a wine that is “pre-aged” and never “goes bad.”
But there is no point in aging most wines. They’re not meant for the cellar. They are “now” wines, not “wow” wines.
Cellaring suggestions:
Keep wine the way you'd maintain a teenager: downstairs, on its side, cool, in the dark, and free from vibration.
No basement? Use the floor of a dark closet or storage area as close as possible to the northeast corner of your home. Keep bottles on their sides.
Don’t store wine anywhere in a small or moderately sized kitchen. Too much harmful ambient heat.
More than anything, steady temperatures matter. Seasonal fluctuations greater than 25 degrees actually are more harmful than a year-round temperature of 70.
Self-contained, humidity- and temperature-controlled wine storage units are ideal, but frequent opening and closing, combined with the machine’s vibrations, may harm wine in the long term (4-5 years).