Maturity of wine

[Blue]

Although no one can say definatively how long a particular wine will age, there are broad clues that help us to determine when to drink our wines.

There are two things that have a high impact on maturing ability Grape Variety (Cepages) and Quality of the wine (By quality I mean vine density, quality of soil, weather that year -lots of rain right at then end of the season is BAD etc. Note this applies more to Old world than new world). So outside of the obvious answers you can get from the Grape Varieties (e.g. Gamay hmmmm, can't keep that for 30 yrs) you should try to determine the overall quality of the wine. Granted this is not a completely objective process. I would look at things such as Yield, drainage of vines, amount of sun that year (and when) etc.

One of the challenges is that in the past New world wines' keepability have been very much understimated by wine critics especially wines from California. The new world's use of technologies and different climate conditions have meant that traditional methods of measuring quality are less reliable...The French have severly underestimated the quality of the wine produced in quantity in the new world and have had to adjust their own production to compete (mostly in the middle of the spectrum).

As WW said though easiest thing to look at, how has this wine (and similar wines) matured in the past in similar types of years.

Another thing to do is obviously to buy a case and pop open one of these puppies and see how its doing...Year, Wine History and Tasting by pros is how we get those guidelines you find in books. In many cases they're right, and in quite a few cases we get surprised....that's what makes this so much fun, it ain't an exact science!

[This message has been edited by Blue (edited 01-19-2001).]