When you were touring
wine country with your in-laws, you bought a
half-case of the "Reserve" at your
favorite winery. Should you drink it or hold
onto it? Or: You don't have the time or the
funds to devote to a serious cellar but still
would like to put a few special bottles away.
Which ones? And how long should you wait to
open them? And what if one of those bottles
you squirreled away for future enjoyment turns
out to be a disappointment?
These sorts of questions can drive casual
wine lovers crazy. Which is why I've put them
to three local experts. Bob Scherb
is the owner of Liner & Elsen, the Northwest
Portland fine-wine shop. David Speer,
owner of Red Slate Wine Co., is a personal sommelier
who advises wine aficionados on building their
collections. And John D'Anna,
who has been a sommelier, distributor and importer
of wines, now works as director of marketing
and Sales for Cristom Vineyards, a Willamette
Valley producer known for its age-worthy pinot
noirs.
As D'Anna points out, "95 percent of people
who buy wine lay it on the back seat of their
car and open it as soon as they get home."
Want to join the ranks of that other 5 percent?
Read on to see some of your most burning wine-aging
questions addressed:
Am I equipped to store wine?
Bob Scherb:
What are the conditions of your cellar? Do you
have a cellar? Wine wants three things. It wants
to be quiet, it wants to be dark and it wants
to be cool. If you don't have the ideal conditions,
what are the conditions? Anything that is not
necessarily ideal is going to subtract from
the time you can age the wine for.
Does price correlate with age-ability?
Scherb:
I think there is a relationship, but it is not
an absolute one. There are Bordeaux in the $10-to-$15
range that will age beautifully. If they start
off as balanced wines, they will continue as
balanced wines. As long as the alcohol and sugars
are not pumped up, they should be capable of
some aging. So price doesn't necessarily guarantee
anything. You just need to understand what makes
a wine agreeable: The tannic structure, the
acidity (in a white wine, a great deal of acidity)
and the generosity of fruit.
Will I even like the way this
wine tastes in 20 years?
Scherb:
Many people have been told that aged wines are
better, and then they taste a 20-year-old wine
and they ask, "Where is the fruit?"
People need to understand that the aging process
really changes the wine. Often a German or Alsatian
riesling can be awfully good right out of the
chute -- people just love the freshness, that
great lively electricity in the mouth. Yet the
potential is there for those wines to age 30
to 40 years. If you open that riesling in 15
years, you are going to get notes of minerality
and earth in place of that freshness, and you
might be disappointed. So we try to understand
what customers are expecting out of their investment.
What are "library releases"?
David Speer:
A winery or importer will hold older vintages
at the winery or warehouse. When they sell these
older vintages, they're generally ready to drink
or will be ready soon. This is great because
you know that the storage has been appropriate
and the wine hasn't been bouncing around through
auction houses and people's houses.
What regions and varietals are,
in general, best for holding and which ones
are best drunk right away?
Scherb: More
and more wines are being made for immediate
consumption; we wouldn't recommend these wines
for aging. They can either go downhill or not
do very much in the bottle. They include a lot
of California cabs, many Argentinean wines,
many Australian shirazes. We recommend holding
nebbiolo-based Italian wines, cabernet francs,
malbecs from the south of France, and, of course,
Burgundy and Bordeaux, for the long haul.
Speer: Wines
in from the northern Rhône also really
benefit from some time, as does vintage port.
Here in the States, most winemakers are making
their wines to be drunk a bit younger, but many
Walla Walla syrahs and other reds from Washington
need five years or so.
Oregon pinot noir: Drink now
or hold?
John D'Anna:
Wait a little bit to drink your favorites. 2008
was a great vintage, but the 2008 wines are
still more like watching a movie on your phone
rather than on a Sony XBR widescreen projection
TV. The '07s are just now getting much more
wonderful to drink. I encourage people to save
even entry-level pinots at least six months
to a year. At Cristom, we release our wines
later; we hold them in bottle at the winery.
So we are selling our 2007s now and just starting
to release our '08s. These wines have benefited
from the additional time in bottle. They are
a little more giving.
I'm pretty sure I shouldn't open
this $50 pinot noir right away, but I am not
interested in starting a cellar. Any advice?
D'Anna: You
can gain a lot by putting a wine away for just
a year or two. That $50 Oregon pinot will have
a lot more to offer up; it will soften up a
lot more. There are things that chemically change
over the course of just a year. More will be
revealed: The wine will actually form a bouquet,
not just aromas. So you don't have to wait until
2020 to open it. That in-between time can be
a lot of fun.
I've tried looking at vintage
charts and critics' recommendations regarding
what to hold and what to open, and they're pretty
confusing. They seem to contradict each other.
Should I just call the winery and ask them when
to drink this wine?
D'Anna: We
get asked all the time. We've resisted putting
our own tasting chart on our website because
we try to avoid being arbiters of taste. We
often suggest that the 2000, 2001, 2003 and
2004 vintages are good right now. We try to
recommend vintages that might be approachable,
without trying to codify it and say, "Drink
this now!" To be honest, when critics advise
"drink" or "hold," that's
something of a craps shoot.
Can you name some Oregon pinot
noir producers that are known to be age-worthy?
Scherb: The
Eyrie Vineyards is always No. 1 for long-term
aging, regardless of varietal. Domaine Drouhin
Oregon, St. Innocent, Cameron and Evesham Wood,
as well. And I recently opened an old McKinlay
that was beautiful.
Cristom is also often mentioned
as a wine that tastes better with some age on
it. For the geeks among us, could you tell us
what is unique about the winemaking process
there?
D'Anna:
The addition of a large percentage of whole
clusters creates an additional layer of muscle
-- tannic structure and acidity -- in the wines.
Our wines have low pH and lots of structure.
And they get 18 months to two years of wood,
with a lot of new oak. These are signs that
the winemaker's intention is to make wines that
are age-worthy. There are some telltale signs
of a wine like this: more texture to the mouth
feel, and more spiciness versus that big bowl
of black-cherry fruitiness.
I know what I like. How can I
come to my own decisions as to when to open
wines?
Speer:
Go to a reputable wine shop or online dealer
and buy a few older-vintage wines, or go somewhere
like Metrovino, where often they'll have something
a decade or older that you can taste. This way
you are not investing a lot of money and time
in something you ultimately may not like. Try
a variety -- wines that are 5, 10, 15 and 20
years old. You might find you lean toward the
wines that are, say, 5 or 10 years old. Then
you can use this as a benchmark. Or, buy between
three bottles and a case (of 12) of a wine you
like and open a bottle after a couple of years.
Do you like it at two years or is it still abrasive?
If it's not drinking well, revisit it in five
years, then drink the third in 10 years. You'll
get to see the progression, which is half the
fun in wine. It's not that it's going to be
perfect in 10 years; wine is a conversation.
It's fun to see that evolution and discover
what you prefer.
