Oaked and Unoaked wines

[stevebody]

Hey, guys! Wine rarely - maybe never - comes with that sort of info on the bottle. For an educated guess at a wine's aging potential, the best you can really do is ask a knowledgeable person at a local wine store, OR - and this is probably what the wine salesperson will do - read the Wine Spectator, Wine Advocate, Wine Enthusiast, or some other wine publication's review of it. Right at the edn of the blurb, it will usually say something like "best between 2005 and 2009", or "can be consumed for the next 1 - 2 years". The first does NOT mean you can't drink it now; just that it will PROBABLY peak around then. The second means that the wine is one of those that's ready to drink when released and probably won't improve with aging.

As a rule - with certain delightful exceptions like my beloved A-Mano Primitivo, which improves beautifully with a year's cellaring - inexpensive wines are made to be drunk NOW, in most cases lacking the tannins, dissolved solids, and acids necessary for significant improvement in the bottle. Even people who sorta know about this stuff occasionally guess wrong, case in point, my own cellaring of a Domaine de Lavabre Languedoc that went straight to Heck when I cellared it for about ten months.

If you register online with Wine Spectator, you can read most of their reviews for free and they'll help with figuring out what to drink and what you can hold.