Is the old adage that 'wine improves with age' still true? Less so than ever. I've been pouring close to half of my "older" wines down the drain lately.
Let's rewind a bit. What had started as a small stash of bottles acquired in my twenties grew into an irresponsibly large collection by the time Y2K came around. My rate of acquisition was outpacing consumption, and if I didn't reverse the trajectory, the wine would outlive me. What I didn't know at the time is that I had already outlived much of it. As I set about depleting inventory, I discovered that a good portion of the bottles I had been cellaring were toast.
Clearly, I had a lot to learn, like most wines do not improve with age. There's no rule of thumb, either. Yes, a lot of German riesling, Bordeaux, and Vintage port can be counted on to age well (along with some others,) but the primary indicator of a wine's longevity is a good balance of fruit and acidity without too high an alcohol level. None of that appears on the label.
Once wine goes into a bottle, the sugar, acid, and alcohol levels are basically locked in. From there, time works its magic (or curse.) The acids interact with sugars, which can result in increased complexity and desirable textures. But time is riddled with pitfalls. Too much acid and you end up with no sugars at all, which means a dull, flat, dead wine. Too much sugar and you end up with a flabby, disjointed, rotten-tasting wine. Finally, alcohol lingers like a mugger in the shadows and will sterilize the wine, no matter how balanced the sugars and acids are.
It's this last bit that has caused me to reconsider the collecting game. Studies have attempted to chart alcohol levels in wine over decades, and, while there could be better data out there, the story is pretty straightforward and not surprising: ABV's have a strong correlation to temperature trends. The warmer it is, the riper grapes get. Riper means more sugar. More sugar means more ethanol. Many winemakers have been compensating for this for decades now.
Empirically, this is manifesting in a disappointing number of cooked bottles coming out of my cellar. I thought I'd learned my lesson in the early 2000's, but apparently not.
Fast forward to today. A lot of the wines that flooded the market during the pandemic should be entering their prime drinking window right now. God knows I certainly stockpiled enough of them. But lately I've been pouring close to half of them down the drain. Barolos, Napa cabernets, Oregon pinots, even some Chateauneufs... A that failure rate, these didn't exactly end up being bargains, no did they, genius?
What do they all have in common? ABV's of 14.5% and higher.
So, is there a change in behavior worth considering? Simply put, there's no time like the present. Sure, I'll have a hard time speeding up the uncorking of all those bottles from the year we got married or the year our daughter was born. But I'm also dispassionately opening suspect bottles, and, unless they're good to go, quickly moving them to the recycle bin. The cellar footprint is shrinking, which is surprisingly cathartic. And the short-term wine cooler is seeing a lot more turnover of fresh, vibrant wines that bring liveliness to our dinner table.