I hope this topic hasn’t been aired, sorry if so and I am repeating. Was mulling this idea over this weekend and wanted to have people’s thoughts.
I guess the core of what I’m thinking about is this. In my notes on younger wines, it won’t be uncommon for me to speculate on where they may be going or where they may end up. I remember one particular extreme example (OK, I may have been caught up in the excitement of the moment) a couple years ago in Banff when I was having a 2010 Ramonet Montrachet and declared that it would have 100 years of life. That was part of an overall description of, basically, wonder, and that wine ended up being my WOTY.
It is hard for me to a) exactly pinpoint what part of my “rating” I could attribute to the ageability of the wine and b) whether I consider that every time I taste something.
I think for me, the answer is no, and even more germane…does “perceived ageability” have to be part of a wine’s profile for me to “rate it highly”?
I don’t think so. I’d think of the hypothetical of a bottle that tastes quite nice now but that I am convinced will be better in 10-15 years vs. a bottle that is brilliant now but I know will have tipped over in 2-3 years. I have no problem thinking that the brilliant bottle in this example will walk away with the WOTD/WOTN. At the same time, sometimes the promising wine will be the winner on any given night for me.
So, my questions—and I think I am asking much more in the context of relatively current-release wines vis-à-vis their futures vs. tasting a wine that has been aged for 30 years and what its performance ends up being:
What value do you ascribe to perceived ageability in any wine you uncork and try?
Do you consciously assess ageability as part of your overall assessment of the majority of what you consume?
If you do ascribe value to ageability, how much value do you ascribe to it as part of your overall impression?
Do you value it differently depending on the locale of the wine, the producer of the wine, or the variety of the grape?
Do you value it differently than you did 5 or 10 years ago?
Gee, FIVE questions! Not sure my little brain can handle this. Without answering them in the fashion you put out, I’ll offer my thoughts.
I tend to hold in higher regard wines that can stand the test of time and that will age better than others, simply because I like wines that will be around awhile in case I cannot get to it early enough. Even if a wine is delicious upon release, unless it is from a grape which will not get better from release (like schiava or arneis), then I would tend to down-rate it, for I like wines to have potential. I also feel it takes a talented winemaker to make something that can stand the test of time, whereas it seems an easier job making something that drinks well upon release but will not get any better.
This is a great question. When I score a wine, it is a snapshot of the exact moment I am consuming said wine. If I make a prediction about its potential ageability, it will in no way affect its present score. If I return to a wine I’ve had before that has either improved or declined with age, i will adjust the score on said wine accordingly.
If all of the markers are there for a wine to reach higher heights with age, I regard it as more worthy of a purchase consideration (because I can afford to stash it away and my experience is that aged wine delivers something positive that young wine cannot replicate). Track record, vintage conditions, and continuity of winery practices are the most important markers in my book. I have no confidence in my or any other critic/taster’s ability to call a wine-with-no-track-record’s propensity to age. Even if you’ve tasted for 100 years (congratulations on your longevity), your perceptions of wine now and memory of wines then are fallible. I do put credence in a winemaker’s statements comparing a vintage to another vintage, but that’s more of an assessment of how a wine will age out, not specifically its longevity.
To your questions…
What value do you ascribe to perceived ageability in any wine you uncork and try?
See above…I don’t trust my perception so discount the value I might ascribe to something that tastes like it will age.
Do you consciously assess ageability as part of your overall assessment of the majority of what you consume?
Sort of; I assess when the wine will likely be most pleasurable to my tastes, which is related to ageability.
If you do ascribe value to ageability, how much value do you ascribe to it as part of your overall impression?
I have no idea how to answer that question. I ascribe a great deal of value to DRC wines, in part because of their ageability. I would penalize wines that are not going to be ready in my lifetime since I’m not that much of a generational philanthropist.
Do you value it differently depending on the locale of the wine, the producer of the wine, or the variety of the grape?
Absolutely.
Do you value it differently than you did 5 or 10 years ago?
Maybe a bit differently…I’m 5 or 10 years older, so my discounting/award values have shifted accordingly.
Yes, I value ageability or the track record of ageability. If I think the wine can age and improve with age, I value that wine more than a relatively equal wine that isn’t perceived as ageable, has aged but not improved/evolved, or has no track record. And given the choice of which to buy, I would always choose the one that has (perceived) ageability.
However I would be lying through my teeth to try and quantify that in any systematic or scientific approach. I think that is where the “plus sign” should be used whether in actual pointy scoring or in purely worded review.
For a wine type that does not gain quality from age, then I do not value it much. Fresh, simple whites, most roses, etc. fit these criteria. The wine will succeed without the ability to age and develop positively over time.
By contrast, for a wine type that has the potential to gain layers and interest from bottle age, I value it highly. Additionally, simply having a long happy-drinking window counts here. Riesling, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Nebbiolo based wines often have this potential. I look for this as a critical factor in my purchases.
There are varieties like Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Zinfandel and the like that make it a complicated question to ask as well as to answer. The same variety can be argued to belong in either category due to factors other than the variety itself. Region, house style, vintage all play large roles here.
An imperfect but commonsense way to test that potential is as easy as leaving a partial bottle a day or so after opening and see if the wine decays, improves or stays pretty much the same. The younger the wine, the more it should improve. I think it has more to do with a collective oxygen appetite than purely one or another component of that appetite such as acidity or tannin. Critics generally do not have the luxury of time to employ this test. But the owner of the bottle does.
It’s a good topic, so worth discussing even if something similar has come up before. For whatever sins it has, this forum doesn’t shout “READ THE f*ckING FAQS AND DO A BL**DY SEARCH BEFORE POSTING” Some non-wine forums can be brutal.
My thoughts below:
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What value do you ascribe to perceived ageability in any wine you uncork and try? If for drinking pleasure alone, then not much, indeed the structure that can assist ageing, may make immediate pleasure less likely
Do you consciously assess ageability as part of your overall assessment of the majority of what you consume? For cellaring yes, but if I’m opening something to drink and enjoy, then I’ll try to pick something more immediately enjoyable
If you do ascribe value to ageability, how much value do you ascribe to it as part of your overall impression? I enjoy cellaring wine. I enjoy aged wine, value the investment in time to get there, and mostly seek wines that will reward ageing be that for 5 years or 40+ years. If it’s how much on the point score, I’m no help, as I don’t do points
Do you value it differently depending on the locale of the wine, the producer of the wine, or the variety of the grape? Only in the sense that an immediately pleasing new-release Barolo isn’t what I seek in Barolo. I’m intrigued by wines that age beyond their appellation - or at least expectations of that appellation, e.g. an older Bardolino, but no more/less interested in it than a Hunter Semillon or a Bairrada
Do you value it differently than you did 5 or 10 years ago? No I don’t think so. I suppose having an interest in wine for a while, without storage/cellaring options, helped stoke my interest in cellaring wines. The great old wines I’ve tasted have stoked that interest, even though the hit rate can be a little low for ‘alive’ and very low for truly great… it’s just that the truly great have been just that, and sometimes from remarkably lowly regarded wines
Ageability has no value. Moreover, unless you have had a few thousand wines at various points, it’s not really possible to assign a “drink by” date, so I pretty much discount everyone’s suggested aging suggestions. With some producers that I’ve known over many years, I can take a guess and in some cases I’ve been correct, but otherwise it’s just a guess.
Other than that, there’s no value. I’m not drinking a wine in 40 years, I’m drinking it now. Some wines will suck in 50 years even more than they do today because you’ve wasted your time. Other wines will be fine. Unless you’ve had a lot of vintages over many years, your guess is essentially random.
I tend to rate mature wines significantly higher than immature wines - because I like them. For me, one of the “this is the whole point” things is wine taking on interesting, developed characteristics. Many young wines, for me, are relatively harsh - be it the fruit drowning things out, non-integrated components like acid, strong tannins etc. I “value” ageability in that I pay a premium for wines that I think will develop well, and I pay a further premium looking after them until I pop them open. So in that sense, I value ageability very highly.
But when I rate a wine I’m drinking now, I don’t “up” the points (much, if at all) for future ageability. I rate the wine based on how it tastes now, and include a “+” sign if I think it will get better and warrant a better score in the future. That’s guesswork more often that not, but if the idea of a TN and score is to communicate, then that little “+” sign and any associated comments are there to help.
There are really 4 different elements that might lead to valuing ageability that can get confused:
A wine that tastes today as good as or less good than another wine that will not age will in x number of years improve in taste in a way that the wine that does not age will not and so will ultimately be a better wine. I regularly have the experience of tasting two wines and thinking that one will be the better one to have tonight, but that the other will in x years be better than the first will ever hope to be (of course I regularly turn out to be wrong, but that is a separate issue).
Some people, though maybe not all, prefer the taste of wines with some years on them to the taste of the same wines when young (others may differ). Since, for those people, only a wine that will provide the taste they value when aged will give them the taste they prefer, only a wine with that capacity to be aged will have that value and so they will value ageability.
For matters of our lifetimes, the simple fact of duration and that a given wine will last in ones cellar for x years and provide pleasurable drinking may give value over another wine that has to be drunk in say the first year of its life. A slightly different but connected issue is that only a wine that will age gives one (if one buys multiple bottles) the pleasure of watching its evolution.
There is a kind of pleasure numbers of people get from certain kinds of considerations about time: isn’t it amazing that this wine will last 100 years, even if I don’t. I don’t know if this is a particularly vinous pleasure or a rational one. But it is a real one. The same reason a 60 year old might plant an oak tree might lead him or her to valuing a wine that only that person’s children or grandchildren will enjoy.
I consider 1-3 completely rational reasons for valuing ageability and 4 a completely human reason.
Most wines we consume are appreciated in the moment. If we have multiple bottles, we might consider a window, but not judge based upon it. “Wow, this isn’t anywhere near ready” is a failure on my part, not the wine’s.
Things are completely different when tasting en primeur. Then age-ability is an important consideration.
Its strange" in some cases ageability is quite valued - it seems like people partially pay up for cru classe wines because they can lay them down for decades to demarcate special life events. But in other situations, like Port or Sauternes, no one really seems to care, and one can often find the aged mature interesting wines for a negative premium to new releases.
So it seems like the marketplace is schizophrenic when it comes to valuing ageability.
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But when it comes to consumption, there are lots of times when I’d rather have something that is less ageable but more appropriate for the occasion. We had a picnic earlier this summer where I took some heavy Rhones. Bad call. I wish I’d had some lighter Beaujolais around for that. However, none were on hand, because I don’t cellar them … since they’re not ageable!
I’ve been involved with this for about 20 years. Other than the first few years when I was groping in the dark, I’ve always based purchases on future consumption with the expectation that the wine would get significantly better with bottle aging.
What value do you ascribe to perceived age-ability in any wine you uncork and try?
I certainly consider it as it is a component the winemaker is or isn’t looking for.
Do you consciously assess age-ability as part of your overall assessment of the majority of what you consume?
I think not. Most of what I consume now is for present enjoyment usually with a meal.
If you do ascribe value to age-ability, how much value do you ascribe to it as part of your overall impression?
15-20% and on the higher end if I have multiple bottles left.
Do you value it differently depending on the locale of the wine, the producer of the wine, or the variety of the grape?
The varietal, producer and locale does play a factor in that they are inherent factors that can’t be ignored.
Do you value it differently than you did 5 or 10 years ago?
Your palate is sure to develop and personal tastes change over time. I used to put a greater emphasis on age-ability.
One of the things I’ve never understood though I’m happy to take advantage of it. I recently picked up some '86, '88 and '90 Climens at auction for about 2/3 current release price.
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Some non-wine forums can be brutal.