OK, so last year I moved a bunch of my wine from offsite storage home. A lot of it’s still in cases and every once in awhile I rummage through. The other night I found a wine I’d bought LONG ago and laughed. It was a Chateau Ste Michelle Chardonnay from the Indian Wells vineyard… from 1993. Oh well, I thought, might as well pop it. If it’s dead, I have more wine around…
It was fine. It wasn’t amazing, profound or anything and it showed the effects of some age with slight nutty notes and some pear notes too. But… it had merely gotten older, it hadn’t really changed. It’s what you’d expect from a mid-range fairly fruit forward Chardonnay that was 17 years old.
So I’ve been wondering - WHY do some wines evolve secondary notes that are much different than the aromas and flavors that same wine has when young and other wines merely get old? Some candidate reasons:
Blends help. Different varieties give forth different characteristics as they age. The problem with this is that single varietal wines from Piedmont, Burgundy, etc all evolve secondary notes as they age.
Clonal selection - some clones simply are more interesting as they age. Possible, but begs the question.
Site. The complex of effects we mean when we say terroir cause this evolution. The same vines would not evolve much if at all if grown on a poorer site. Hmm… OK but WHAT does the site do in this case?
Fruit quality/viticulture. How the grapes are farmed, the decisions made re: canopy managment, etc all product fruit that will evolve.
Winemaking. Various things can be done that suppress evolution (Pick your favorite debil, oak, micro-ox, etc).
And… well… what are the chemical differences? What do wines that evolve have that wines which merely get older lack?
yes, I KNOW Mike. Not the reason I posted. I get that some wines don’t age. My question was Why? Saying “some wines are made for immediate consumption” merely begs the question of “what causes that and why don’t they evolve while other wines do?” I’m not particularly interested in the specific wine i had, it was just what sparked the question in my mind.
Rick, great question! It is one I have never really heard a satisfactory answer to. Good example too. However I have had examples from what would seem a qualitative equivilant, Beringer Knights Valley Cabernet, that did evolve with age. Frankly, I am suprised your chardonnay was as good as it was at such an age. You must have good storage!
I am sorry not to have more substance to add, but great thread and I hope many weigh in, esp winemakers as they may have more perspective. I know there are winemakers tricks to make a wine more readily drinkable young. Does that also work the other way?
From my own experience, I tend to agree with the balance idea; but is it that simple? I hope so. Sometimes the most obvious answer is the best.
There is a lot of knowledge on this board, I hope many weigh in!
For a wine to simply last it needs a little nice fruit but a fair bit of acid. I think tartaric acid is the most significant preservative in wine save perhaps S02.
For a wine to positively evolve it needs something more than monochromatic fruit flavors to begin with in addition to bright acid and reasonable tannins. It is the breadth of non-fruit flavors that evolve into (specifically thinking about the bordeaux grapes here) leather, tobacco, and all the savory things for which we repeatedly dive into the glass of 20 year old Bordeaux. And when a vintner picks late to get the biggest fruit possible he leaves behind the green or herbal components (in whites it may be the seashell, mineral, or citrus blossom notes or the like) that make all the difference 15+ years down the road.
So, Ben… thoughts on what makes those components exist in the grape? Is it clone, terroir, when you pick (that is, all grapes of a type have non-fruit compenents)?
Hmmm…the grape flavor components exist because God wants us to be happy? I have no real idea why, but the how of making the most of them leads back to an understanding of innate grape chemistry/flavors (what makes Cabernet Franc so Franc-y), the degree to which a site can further define the flavors (is the place suitable for Franc as you envision it?), growing/harvest decisions that play to the grape’s strength, and winemaking that doesn’t mask the character brought in from the field. Or something…
Man, you must have been drinking some unusual California chardonnays. Most I know are badly oxidized by 10 years!
But it’s a great question you ask.
I don’t know the answer, but what’s striking to me is how few New World wines gain complexity. That’s famously true of most California cabs and I remember being struck by that same thing when I was served a 1960s Penfold’s St. Henri Shiraz in the mid-90s. It had mellowed but was completely monochromatic.
In Burgundy and the Rhone, it’s tempting to attribute the complexity to the dirty, moldy cellars – i.e., ambient microbiological factors. But that doesn’t explain Bordeaux, or German rieslings or Barolo, all of which can gain remarkable complexity, yet come from areas where pristine cellars are the norm.
The exceptions in the New World – e.g., old BV and Phelps cabs, plus Ridge Montebello – are/were less ripe than the average cab today. So maybe that is a factor.
Another factor might be fermentation with the indigenous instead of commercial, inoculated yeasts.
I’m all ears. I’ve been particularly surprised at how some lower level rieslings age remarkably and actually seem to gain complexity (actually, yes, some Saint Michelle gift bottles burried for 15 years). I was always taught if it aint in the bottle on release, then it never will be with age, but you could have fooled me with these wines.
The 1993 Indian Wells that Rick tried was from the coolest year in Washington of the past 20, so acidity was abundant, hence the preservation (and, I might add, Seattle Wine Storage is a great facility!)
I think we’re on the same wavelength regarding increasing ripeness narrowing the spectrum of flavors until…well, until the winemaker is satisfied there ain’t nothing in there even remotely hinting of non-fruit character.
One has to only try today’s beasts compared to a 1974 Heitz Martha’s or 73 Stags Leap (as I was able to do recently) to feel the young ones will never, ever develop in the beautiful manner of the old guard.
Ben- good to see you here, it’s been too long since I’ve talked to you. I have an 02 Bel Canto on deck for the next couple of weeks- looking forward to it.
Vintages can affect how wines age. Not exclusively, but as an example, I drank a 96 J Christopher Pinot Noir the other night. Not a great vintage, but a great producer IMO. Structurally, the wine has held up, but the secondary characteristics you might find in a stronger vintage are absent.
Many ultra modern reds come with the label “needs time”, but all the time might offer is resolution of tannin. Unfortunately on many of these wines, the balance from acidity is missing, so the tannin becomes the most interesting part and once resolved the wine takes on dull and sometimes very off putting characteristics. Case in point- ever had an aged Aussie Shiraz that loses tannin and just tastes like sweetened prune purée?
Finally, I think high quality vineyards and a gentle hand in the cellar more interested in creating wine that exemplifies a region or variety rather than manipulating for points, often make wines that will age and evolve beautifully. Case in point, I had an amazing cdr Villages from Rasteau the other night from 100 year old Grenache vines which had begun offering subtle herbal notes. It offered a beautiful simplicity and I loved getting to taste it ten years old. I could go on all day in the same vein about how this gets done with Nebbiolo in Piedmont and Sangiovese in Tuscany.
IMHO, some wines evolve as a natural process of the combination of “ingredients” present in the original wine. Much like cooking, you place a number of ingredients, spices, etc into the pot and after cooking, the final result does not taste or smell like the original concoction. Maybe this is an oversimplication, but it is my opinion. Your chard, or any other simple wine has no where to go. It lacks the complexity in the first place to evolve into anything else. I just find it amazing that it lasted that long. Apparently it had those items required for aging, acid, tannin, or whatever else to go the distance.
I am certainly no expert on wine or specifically Chard, but some Chards a built to evolve and age. I point to white burgs, but I assume there are some new world chards that will also evolve.
Jancis Robinson’s excellent little Guide to Wine Grapes includes an interesting feature. At the end of an entry on a grape there is a bar that shows the ultimate potential quality of wine made from the grape. So for Cabernet, Pinot, Riesling, Syrah, etc. (the “great grapes”) the bar is blue (some color, maybe not blue) all the way across. For Zinfandel and other very good but not great grapes (her opinion of course) the bar is maybe 80% blue. Norton might be blue only 25% of the bar.
This is not directly an answer to your question and certainly Chardonnay is listed as a “great grape.” Of course we know that many white Burgundies evolve to dead in just a few years!
Petite Sirah is probably the poster child for California wines that age but do not positively evolve. I think those who make this claim are wrong but it is a commonly held view.
Oh you didn’t offend… I’m not that sensitive. I don’t really expect an answer here, but the question’s always intrigued me and that wine brought it out again. The thing is, saying "well, some wines have more components makes me ask “Why? Clones? Soil? What is it that does that?” If we do thought experiments, would the DRC vines give us the same wine if transplanted to an excellent site in Cali or Oregon? If not, then would it age? If it’s terroir, then why do older Cali Cabs sometimes show beautifully with age? Is it mostly ripeness?
I tend to think that wines which show complexity young evolve where as simple wines don’t… but that again begs the question of why some wines are complex in the first place. There’s a lot of winemaker knowledge here so I’m hoping that some folks with experience closer to the vines (like Ben, above) will chime in.
Well, it is a great subject, but like a lot of the wine discussions, I suppose it depends on how one defines “evolve.” In the example that you gave in your original post, I think from your description the Chardonnay DID evolve–there were smells and flavors in the aged wine that you would not have gotten in a newly-released version of the same wine. I would imagine that the perceived fruit/acid balance also changed over time. The problem is that the way the wine evolved was less enjoyable to you than the wine probably would have been on release.
Certainly, you have to separate out the aging curve/evolution process for white wines and red wines. But as a generalization, I do think the fruit/acidity balance is key to a positive evolution of the wine as it ages. In addition, I think the age of the vines and the yields tend to be relevant. Younger vines that are managed to produce high yields are much less likely to produce wines that evolve positively with age than their counterparts that are older and lower-yielding. I also think that WHERE the vines are planted is very important. For each grape variety, there is an optimal location–soil, sun, rain, warmth, etc.–where the grape produces more interesting wines. Pretty clearly, planting a Chardonnay vine in a cool (but not cold) climate in limestone is going to produce a wine that evolves differently than the same vine planted in more clay and a warmer climate.
Ultimately, I think there are a LOT of factors–both in the vineyard and in the winery–that affect the aging curves of wines.
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