READING magazines such as Winestate, you can find a lot of advice about the best age to drink a wine. There is usually a guide on the back of wine bottles, written by knowledgeable marketers and winemakers, which typically flows something like, "... this rich, fruity concentrated wine displays soft tannins and is ideal to drink now, but should reach its peak in about five years from vintage". It can all sound a bit confusing. We use these words like ‘peak' ‘full matured' ‘optimum drinking' too flippantly, without considering or explaining what they actually mean.
Does the rich, fruity concentrated wine in question become richer and more concentrated after five years? Surely ‘peak' implies intensity - more of the same - when in fact the truth of the matter is that the wine will lose its youthful intensity with age.
How often do you miss out on the enjoyment a wine can give in its youth by leaving it too long in your cupboard or cellar? I'm guilty, like the rest of you, of leaving a bottle too long, past its ‘peak' (oops! I've used that word again). It could be argued that some consumers should not cellar their wines at all - because they don't actually enjoy the consequences; a mature Burgundy, for instance, is an acquired taste.
On many occasions students have carefully delivered old wines to me in class to open and enjoy with their peers; and on tasting the wine the first question they timidly ask me is, ‘Is it off?' because they don't recognise the signs and characteristics of maturation. I usually quickly say yes and quietly consume the excellent bottle in private! Joking aside, the tertiary aromas and bouquet that develop often don't appeal to people's senses that are fine-tuned to regularly drinking pure, fruit-driven wines packed with power, structure and intensity.
Originally red wines were kept in the bottle until their harsh flavour component, phenolic and tannins had subsided. The use of modern techniques such as micro-oxygenation softens a wine's structure before bottling and lessens the time needed for a wine to be deemed ready to drink. Time spent in oak can do the same thing, but exposure to new oak can increase the tannins in a wine. It's a complex story, as climate and viticultural practices can also influence the wine's final taste.
Canberra winemaker Tim Kirk from Clonakilla makes one of Australia's leading shiraz/viognier blends and offers the following advice to customers: "We produce a medium-bodied wine from a cool climate - which does not have a tannin coat to shed. Our wines have fine tannins so are approachable at an early age; you can literally drink it from the barrel. When people ask me at what age they should drink our wines I ask them, ‘What flavours do you like? - the rich fruit aromas of youth or the developed leafy autumnal characters that bottle age brings on'."
The key components for a wine to happily age are a low pH level (especially for white wines) and high levels of flavour and phenolics - especially tannins. Shiraz, cabernet sauvignon, nebbiolo or red blends which incorporate merlot, grenache, or mourvedre are some of the popular grapes varieties that cellar well. Riesling and semillon are the most popular white varieties.
The process of bottle ageing is, happily, one of the key factors that differentiate wine from any other beverage, so I'm a strong advocate for it. The Romans were the first to appreciate aged wines and they commented that their Falernian wines were better at 15 to 20 years - stored in amphoras, not bottles, obviously!
White wines develop toasty, nutty and honey characters with age. Riesling can develop kerosene or petrol tertiary aromas, which is an acquired taste! Their colour intensifies, changing from straw through to a deep gold. Red wines actually lighten with age as microscopic colour pigments (anthocyanins) combine with tannin to form longer chain molecules that precipitate out as visible crust or sediment. With this loss of tannins the wines will taste softer and appear brick red as opposed to bright red/purple. Over time, red wines can display intriguing bouquets reminiscent of leather, cigar box, tobacco leaf and coffee, or earthy aromas such as mushroom or barnyard.
I'd recommend a ‘twin peaks' approach. Often there are two opportunities for drinking a wine - soon after it is bottled or within the first few years, and then leaving it to fully develop its full array of tertiary aromas, which can take many years in the case of cabernet sauvignon and shiraz. And it doesn't matter if you prefer only one or both; just as long as you understand what is in store when you draw the cork or ‘crack' the bottle open.