Do All Wines Mature With Age?
It's culturally implicit that wine is best consumed years after it was bought. But is this just a myth? This misconception leads many to store wines pointlessly for years on end, when in fact, almost every good wine you can purchase is consumable the second its rung up on the till. The longer you leave a minority of good wines in decent storage conditions, the better they taste. But there are many wines that don't benefit from the process, and plenty that start to taste a lot worse. Some experts have opined that 10% of red wine and a pitiful 5% of white wine actually benefits from leaving it to collect dust. The same figures suggest, rather damningly, that barely 1% of wine being produced will be better off being left for over a decade. So remember that next time you fantasise about the hammer going down on a century old bottle of red.
From these figures, my advice to you would be to stick to reds if you must age. White wine doesn't need aging enough to risk it. Just because a wine isn't worth subjecting to the ageing process, doesn't mean it isn't fantastic. Sauvignon Blanc wine and other regularly encountered white wines can be enjoyed no matter how old they are. A fantastic, refreshing taste awaits without the effort. The evidence is there that some white wines do perform well over time. But frankly, the time and money you invest will be gambled with little pay off. A Gewurztraminer wine with the right producer, production year and the most succulent source grapes could end up tasting twice as good ten years down the line. But more than likely, in spite of its good pedigree, it will taste like bitter dog water and you'll wish you just opened it last decade.
The science behind white wine's ageing aversion is found in wine making process. White wine (unlike red) is made without fermenting the skins and stems of the grape. Those varieties that involve leaving the skins on, will shortly remove them anyway. Leaving the skins on red wine is done primarily for the colour it gives the wine, because it has the detrimental effect of releasing not especially nice tasting 'tannins' into the wine. Their effect is however, counter acted by several years of maturation in the bottle. Hence, many high tannin red wine are released to market later.
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