Shelf life of cabernet?

[Joel]

What is the shelf life of cabernet?

Thank you and all the best!

[Innkeeper]

That depends on a multitude of independent and dependent variables. Start with the harvest. An ideal growing season can produce cabernet grapes with long lifetimes. A poor season that could include such things as hail during budding, rain at harvest time, early frost, etc, can result in inferior grapes to work with. So much for God, now enter man. How the producer handles the grapes from harvest, through crushing, fermentation, blending, finishing in barrels, etc, all have a huge effect on the life of the wine. Cabernet is a versitile enough grape that a variety of styles of wine can be made from it. There is the so called claret style. This expression comes to us from the English. It refers to early harvested, and lightly vinified cabernet based Bordeaux wines that they love to quaff. Much Bordeaux, and cabernet from California, Australia, and elsewhere is made in what some people call the "big" style. This is done by taking quality grapes, and vinifying in a way that makes the wine fuller, more acidic, and more tannic. This is a more expensive process, and thus the wines cost more. The big cabs have longer lives than the clarets, and good ones from good years can have a long, long lifetime. To find one that will live a long time, one, but certainly not the only, factor is cost. It is possible, but not likely to find a $10.00 cabernet that will last 10 or 20 years. It is likely, but not impossible, that a $100.00 cabernet will last that long.

[This message has been edited by Innkeeper (edited 03-07-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Innkeeper (edited 03-07-2000).]

[Bucko]

Highly variable. I've had Ridge Monte Bellos at 20 years that were still hanging, and believe it or not, in 1995 I had a 1955 Louis Martini that was still delicious.

Bucko