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Drinkability Window - 3/30/2024 4:00:46 PM

perfectpairingsloung

Posts: 1
Joined: 3/10/2024
Status: offline

Can someone please help me understand the drinkability window? How do you know how many years a wine is supposed to sit before it should be drank? For example, if I go to the store and buy a wine, how do I know when it should be drank? I have a few early 2000s wines that I think are cool to have, but I don't know if they are past drinkability. I want to be able to accurately add when I should drink wines to my Cellar Tracker wines.

Thanks for your help and wisdom.

Post #: 1

RE: Drinkability Window - 3/30/2024 4:50:07 PM

KPB

Posts: 4663
Joined: 11/25/2012
From: Ithaca, New York
Status: offline

Welcome to our forum! But this is such a tough question.

For me, it depends on the type of wine. I’ll give two examples.

I happen to drink a lot of southern Rhône red wines, like Chateauneuf du Pape, Gigondas. Those drink well on release but tend to be a bit simple and mostly built around powerful fruit flavors. They often develop for an hour or so in the glass, if your dinner is slow. But, if I wait three or four years, the less expensive wines already will have developed a more exciting nose. And after twelve or fifteen years, the best wines become incredibly spicy and complex. So they have two windows. But you do want to finish most within twenty years, and cheaper wines within ten. If you hold them too long, they start to taste like someone boiled them.

But I also have a lot Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa. Those wines behave really differently. You actually can drink them on release but if you do, it works best to let them breath for a day or two before the dinner. By age six or eight they drink quite well. Just a tiny subsubset last longer. So there are a few that would be insanely good at age twenty, but again, most would taste boiled and flat long before.

Then there is a question of wines shutting down. Sometimes, if you age a wine, it is good right on release but then seems dull and very tannic for a few years, but then blossoms. Hard to anticipate which will behave this way.

Reading the notes posted by people who recently tried the same bottle is very helpful. But keep in mind that around here, most people make a real effort to keep their wine in a dark, cool, damp storage area. Often, below 60 degrees. If your wine is in a living room wine rack… drink within six months!

< Message edited by KPB -- 3/30/2024 7:16:34 PM >

_____________________________

Ken Birman
The Professor of Brettology

(in reply to perfectpairingsloung)

Post #: 2

RE: Drinkability Window - 3/30/2024 7:03:48 PM

Ibetian

Posts: 3582
Joined: 7/15/2007
From: Sarasota, FL and the Berkshires
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: perfectpairingsloung

Can someone please help me understand the drinkability window? How do you know how many years a wine is supposed to sit before it should be drank? For example, if I go to the store and buy a wine, how do I know when it should be drank? I have a few early 2000s wines that I think are cool to have, but I don't know if they are past drinkability. I want to be able to accurately add when I should drink wines to my Cellar Tracker wines.

Thanks for your help and wisdom.

Welcome to the forum!

The two key factors are:

What are the wines?

How have they been stored?

The vast majority of wines should be fine to drink the evening you buy them.

Certain Bordeaux, Burgundy and other wines might drink well the day you buy them, but might be better years or even decades from now if stored in a cool, dark place.

The CellarTracker drinking windows are not perfect, but they are a good place to start.

How did you acquire the early 2000 wines you have, inherited, perhaps? Were they stored in a proper wine cellar? With few exceptions, 20 year old wines will be ready to drink or past their prime. Pop a cork or two and judge for yourself!

_____________________________

“I was a glutton at the banquet and spilt the finest wine,” Mick Jagger, Wandering Spirit

(in reply to perfectpairingsloung)

Post #: 3

RE: Drinkability Window - 3/30/2024 7:16:01 PM

KPB

Posts: 4663
Joined: 11/25/2012
From: Ithaca, New York
Status: offline

Dup

_____________________________

Ken Birman
The Professor of Brettology

(in reply to KPB)

Post #: 4