From a recent Pinotfile newsletter
“The truth of wine aging is that it is unknown, unstudied, poorly understood, and poorly predicted.”
Winemaker Zelma Long
One of the wine enthusiasts I know is prone to say about wine, “It’s not ready to drink. It’s a baby, a Lolita.” Sometimes I wonder if he ever enjoys a bottle of wine, since he drinks with guilt, always thinking the wine might be even better with more age.
Judgments about when a wine will reach its peak are very speculative. No one can predict a wine’s apogee with accuracy. UC Davis chemist Sue Ebeler (Wines & Vines, August 2008) pointed out that one can forecast how long a wine will live, but it is impossible to tell what it will taste and smell like. For me, I don’t want to be encumbered with worrisome thoughts about how long to cellar a wine. I just pop the cork when I feel like drinking a wine.
The golden rule of cellaring wine is never to let wine slip past its prime. When a wine is over the hill, it will never come back to life. When you discover a wine at its peak, pull the cork on every bottle you own and party.
Most American Pinot Noir is ready to drink upon release, and although the wines can improve after a few years in bottle, they are usually not made for long-term aging. Noted wine writer and teacher, Kevin Zraly, wrote in the latest (2014) edition of Windows on the World Complete Wine Course, “It’s a common misconception that all wines improve with age. In fact, more than 90% of all top wines made in the world should be consumed within a year, and less than 1% of the world’s wines should be aged for more than 5 years.”
The French Wine Explorers Wine e-Newsletter article by sommelier Lauriann Greene-Solin addressed “The 20% Rule”: “Only 20% of wines have aging potential past one or two years. Why? Because they were not created with aging in mind. The winemaking techniques used for these wines favor fruitiness and freshness, not extraction of the dry matter and tannins needed for a wine to age well. They may also lack the quality to stand up to aging. Only quality wines evolve into something more interesting than they were in their youth.”
When I looked at what several noted wine writers had to say about aging wine (and limited comments on Pinot Noir specifically), including Tim Patterson (Wines & Vines), Kevin Zraly (Windows on the World Complete Wine Course), Jamie Goode (The Science of Wine), and Emile Peynaud (The Taste of Wine), and sommelier Lauriann Greene-Solin, the consensus indicated the following factors were most critical for wine longevity.
- Polyphenols, including various tannins and anthocyanins (pigments), act as a natural preservative giving wine the potential for a long life and account for the transformation of wine over time. These chemical components neutralize oxygen and keep oxygen from causing the degradation of everything else in wine. As the tannins evolve and diminish over time, the oxidative process eventually causes browning of color, and tertiary aromas and flavors such as dried fruit, vegetal and nutty characters. The longer a wine is in contact with the skins before, during and after fermentation, the more tannin there will be in the finished wine. Aging in oak barrels also contributes more preservative tannins. Pinot Noir has less tannin and usually will not age as well as say Cabernet Sauvignon, which has more tannin.
- Acidity (low pH and high acidity) is more crucial for white wines than red wines because whites lack red wines’ polyphenols.
- Balance. This is also a crucial factor in longevity. Balance represents a subjective perception of harmony between all of a wine’s components that produce aromas, flavors and textural characteristics of taste, including acid, sugar, alcohol, tannin, fruit extract and oak, with no one element dominant.
- Whole Cluster fermentation contributes tannins. Ted Lemon points out that adding some percentage of whole cluster adds aromatic freshness to older Pinot Noirs. “A Pinot Noir that is ten years old and has a percentage of whole cluster will be more aromatically complex than the same wine 100% de-stemmed.”
- Quality. “A wine cellar is not a wine hospital - bad wines don’t get magically better with age, they just get older.” (Dr. Vinny, Wine Spectator, 1/31-2/28, 2015) Not all quality wines are meant to be aged.
- Appellation or Typicity of Wine. Some appellations have more aging potential than others. Red Burgundies, for example, can be aged a long time.
- Cellar Conditions. None of the criteria mentioned above have any relevance if the wine is not cellared under ideal conditions. Most desirable is a constant temperature (50 to 59ºF), absence of vibration and light, and high humidity. Heat for any prolonged period should be avoided as it accelerates premature aging of wine. A study at the American Chemical Society’s 2014 National Meeting in San Francisco found that Sangiovese wine stored in conditions mimicking those of an Italian apartment without air conditioning (68º to 80ºF had aged four times as fast as the same wine stored at 59º to 62ºF. Other research shows that gradual variations in temperature are not as important as the total number of heat units that accumulate over time.
- Persistence. Sommelier Lauriann Greene-Solin claims that if you count the number of seconds a wine’s aromas last on your palate once you spit or swallow the wine can reveal the longevity of the wine. “If it lasts longer than 6 seconds, the aging potential is good. More than 8 seconds, and the wine will likely last a number of years in your cellar.
- High Alcohol. High alcohol may not impair aging if it is in balance with other components of wine since it acts as an additional preservative. Sugar is also a preservative but this discussion centers on dry wines only.
- Size of Bottle. Wine matures more slowly in magnums (1.5 liter bottles) and lasts longer.
- Vintage. Some vintages provide better fruit, acid and tannin balance making the wines more age worthy.
The crux of the aging issue and specifically the aging of American Pinot Noir is that cellaring the wines only makes sense if you like the effects of aging on Pinot Noir. Pinot Noirs that have been cellared are definitely different, but whether they are better depends on the opinion of the drinker. Older Pinot Noir is often an acquired taste that comes from experience. The winery marketing machine often encourages buyers to cellar wines, but few consumers do, so they don’t know what great aged Pinot Noir really tastes like, and whether it will turn out to suit their taste.
UC Davis chemist, Sue Ebeler, has been quoted as saying, “It is very difficult to predict the future sensory profile from today’s chemical composition.” In other words, as wine writer Tim Patterson has noted, “One can prophesy how long a wine will live, but you can’t tell what the wine will taste or smell like.”
Over time, Pinot Noir tends to have softer tannins and tertiary characters develop. The fruit is less fresh and more dried in character, vegetal aromas (mushroom) often develop, and floral, earthy and undergrowth characters may dominate. Poorly balanced Pinot Noirs may show exaggeration of elements that were not harmonious on release such as oak and alcohol as the fruit fades. Flaws in wine may be exaggerated over time. My personal preference is for young wines that benefit from a year in bottle since this is often the time needed for the wine to recover it’s personality that was present in barrel.
My experience has been that the overwhelming number of American Pinot Noirs will hold their freshness and age nicely over 2 to 5 years, often with subtle improvement, but beyond this time, although a wine may hold on, it is rare to find one that continues to benefit from further aging.
Cheers,
Blake