Aging wines?

[sharon001]

I am perplexed about how long to wait before drinking wines. I am more or less up on "smaller" French wines (Loire valley or Languedoc and things like that), but recently I've been trying to tackle Burgundies, and there, I'm at a loss. I bought a Volnay 1er Cru 2000, but I'm not sure if I should drink it yet! What is the optimal aging for a good burgundy? (Which reminds me, too, that recently at a lunch in Paris, an older friend served us a 2000 Pauillac from Château Haut-Bages Libéral and when I told a wine-knowledgeable friend, she said, "Already?" And here I was thinking 2000 was already pretty good to go...)

How long do you have to wait for these wines?

[winoweenie]

Hi Sharon and welcome to the board.There's no chart for ageing wines. Every vintage from every property is different. As a rule of thumb in lesser vintages you should start drinking the lesser growths at the 5-6 year mark and the top wines at the 7-9 year mark. In great years, like 2000, the lesser griowths need 8-12 years and the great wines 10-15. Again, this is a very subjective matter and no chart can really give you definative answers. Normally the reviews in Wine Spetator, Parker, etc give you their idea of optimam drinking windows. WW

[wondersofwine]

Hi, Sharon and welcome. I'm a Burgundy lover but I too am sometimes perplexed by the drinking window and when a wine will peak. 2000 was a decent vintage in Burgundy but not the hyped vintage that it is for Bordeaux wines. Most Burgundies, red or white, go through a closed period. In some cases you can enjoy them in the first three years as a fruity, immature wine, and then after about eight years as a more mature, layered, complex wine. I don't know if your Volnay Premier Cru is in a closed period now but if you have just the one bottle, you might want to save it until 2008. If you have several bottles, go ahead and open one now and see how it is presenting. If you are going to save it for awhile, try to keep in a cool, dark place.