How long can you store wine?

[Brom]

Quite true.

All wines change with age. All wines eventually go bad from age. The vast majority of wines do not do much more than just get older and die (go bad) with age. Others however change for the good.

This is not true of all wines; this is not true for all ages. Simple and clear, eh?

First, the "vast majority". This does not mean that wines that change for the good are rare. It just means that many more wines not intended to age are produced. Beaujolais nouveau is popularly intended to be drunk within 6 months of release and they make 60 million bottles of it a year.

A lot of wine, huh? That 60 million is less than 10% of all Beaujolais made every year; most of those 650 million bottles are intended to be drunk within a year or two.

That gets us to different ages. Different wines drink best at different ages. Some, say a nice white Bordeaux, drink best within a year. Others, say a top red Bordeaux, will be much less harshly tannic therfore more drinkable at 8 years than it is at two, and from a good year will last 20 years or more.

So will that $8 Cotes de Bordeaux be good for 20 years? 10 years? Nope, these wines drink best 2-4 years old.

Complicated? You betcha. Time for rules of thumb and generalities:

Drink whites younger than reds, 90% of the time within a couple of years.

Darker reds last longer than lighter reds.

Cheaper wines do not last as long as expensive wines.

Dessert wines, white and red, are long lived.

To not only last but to improve, to 'develop' in the bottle, that is to say to become more complex of flavor and aroma (which is to say the wine develops secondary and tertiary flavors), a wine must be big and balanced. What must be balanced is the combination of fruit, tannins, acid.

All but the last are as stated generalities, that is to say not always true.

That's a lot for now. Look and see if you have follow-up questions.