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+--- Thread: '99 wine (/thread-17486.html)
- danm - 01-04-2000
My daughter was born in '99, and I would like to buy several cases of wine to drink at the special occasions in her life.
When do the '99 vintages come out.
How do I decide what to buy? What will be good in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years.
- Randy Caparoso - 01-06-2000
It won't be another year or two before you see actual reviews of wines from '99. Reds from the vintage with 10-15 year aging potential won't be released until '01 at the earliest. So you have some time to figure this out.
Meanwhile, I can tell you a little something about '99s in some of my favorite wine growing regions. In Oregon, for instance, everyone is happy as clams about the vintage -- rich, intense, yet round, flavorful Pinot Noirs, the best of which will have some ability to improve past a decade. Quality in all growing regions in California are reportedly good to very good. In Germany, they're quite happy; and so you should be able to pick out some wonderful sweet style Rieslings (Spatlese, Auslese and Beerenauslese) that will improve well past their tenth years.
The key to cellaring wine, in any case, is making sure you have a good place to store them. If you haven't already done so, you should plan to have storage bins placed in the darkest, quietest, most consistently cool part of your home. The closer to 55-60 degrees F., the better. If you live in an apartment or some place with no true natural cellaring conditions, you might want to invest in portable storage units with built-in temperature/humidity control. There are ads in every major wine magazine (found in any bookstore) for these units, which come in many sizes.
Otherwise, if you don't have good storage, long term cellaring (i.e. more than 10 years) simply is not recommended, since wine ages two to three times faster at higher, fluctuating temperatures (say, between 70 and 90 degrees). Under these conditions, even wines that are built to last have difficulty improving in the bottle, which is the reason for cellaring in the first place.
- jcanney - 01-24-2000
that's a beautiful idea! when that time comes for me and my wife,,, i'll be using your idea [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/smile.gif[/img]
take care
jason