Aging wine. . .sans mumbo jumbo.

[shelbo]

At Thanksgiving we opened a 1970 Bordeaux that had been in my mom’s basement for the last 30 years (perfect temperature, dark, nice for a wine cellar). It hadn’t gone “bad” (wasn’t funky, wasn’t vinegar), but it was clear that it was way way past its prime. It was thin and watery; even the color was kind of faded. There was a thick sediment along the side of the bottle, and everyone agreed that that’s where the flavor must have gone.

[psycat90]

@silenus

To start with the later questions:

If psycat90 happens by, she can give you all the chemistry. But it is true, and you can taste it yourself for proof.

Yikes! I wish I could.

I’m swamped at work today and heading off for vacation in the gorgeous Garden State bright and early tomorrow. My SDMB time will be brief for the next week or so.

About the best I could do right now is point you to website with what looks like a good article on wine chemistry.

Vintage Chemistry

I can try to find more and answer any other questions. (Of course I make no promises, but I’ve got plenty of books and class notes at home that I can leaf through tonight if I get everything packed in a reasonable amount of time.)

[psycat90]

@Roboto

Out of curiosity, what is the type/age/price of some of these wines? I would love the novelty of drinking a 100 year old wine (assuming it was not vinegar). Even if it tasted bad, I still want to try it. I looked online to find some old wines, but couldn’t really find any. Perhaps that is the type of thing you’d need to get from a brick and mortar store.

Sauternes (a sweet white wine from Bordeaux) is a classic wine that is often considered divine after 50 or 60 years or more.

Chateau d’Yquem is the most famous, but there are others.

Here’s a 1906 - 750 ml for $2628 as a quick example.

[medstar]

@silenus

Blind tastings can be fun. I once ran one on our beer club where they got Olde English 800, St. Ives, and other rot-gut malt liquors served to them as “homebrews.” Rave reviews from all of the tasters.

Roboto, it depends on where you live and what your definition of “average” is. I know of several wine shops in SoCal where I can buy 100 year old wine. Out of my price and tastebud range, but I can buy them if I want.

Silenus, did any of the tasters get very upset with you for making them drink substandard brews?

[silenus]

Oh, yeah. I caught a ration of flak for that tasting. But I think I made my point, as well. It took the more arrogant and pretentious of our members down a few pegs, which was unforgivable (to them at least.) There is an awful lot of “perception” involved in “taste,” as Trunk has noted above. Wise beverage conni-sewers know better than to try to show off during a blind tasting. You’ll be lucky to identify the right continent of the wine, much less the vintner or vintage.

[psycat90]

OK. Home, mostly packed. I have some time to actually read the thread and respond. Please excuse my crummy formatting. Or don’t, because it’s pretty much out of sheer laziness.

So, if that’s the real science, what’s that mean. . .that “those tannins over time will join together along with other chemicals and settle out of the wine” or is that just more wine marketing speak?

I don’t know if the article I linked to sufficiently answered your question, it was the best I could find with a quick Google while at work. Looking through my books here, the answer is about the same

• red wines meant to be aged are high in tannins when young. During the aging process the tannins will join with pigment molecules to form polymers that soften the wine’s astringency and changes its color. Bottle aging adds new odors and flavors to wine because the vast majority of its reactions occur in the absence of oxygen. After the wine’s tannins and other components have reacted with and consumed the small amount of oxygen dissolved in the wine and in the air in the bottle’s head space (aka ullage), the environment inside is anaerobic. This is the first time in the life of a red wine when chemical reactions can take place with oxygen excluded. The lower the pH, the slower these bottle-aging reactions occur and these slower reactions that lead to a more complex array of desirable end products.

Loosely lifted from The University Wine Course by M. Baldy, Ph.D.
Sapo said

and while you are at it, does aging really happen in a bottle or just in the cask before bottling? Does storing a bottle of wine for any length of time make any sense or are they at their prime when bottled and it is all downhill from there?

silenus answered this, I’ll just repeat it. Most wines today are ready for consumption when released. Wineries will bottle age most wines before they are released to consumers, it could be anywhere from 2 weeks to 4 years for some of the major varietals, and longer for others like port, etc.
If I had to use a very rough average and throw some numbers out there for typical California varietals and mid-priced wineries, I’d say something like 2-3 months bottle age for Chardonnays and 3-6 months at the very least for Cabernet Sauvignon before you even see it on a shelf.

**silenus **said

But it is true, and you can taste it yourself for proof.

• While there is some scientific data, I might have to concede that this is the best answer out there at the moment. Just doing some quick searches through my books and online doesn’t turn up a lot of empirical data. This may be one of those instances where ‘the proof is in the pudding.’ Lame, but there you have it.

Where is the guy who put the measuring equipment in a bottle of wine in 1980, stored bottles in optimum conditions, stored bottles in poor conditions, and retested the wines in 1990?

Well, he probably works here.

Most likely the case. There has been a lot of heat lately on UC Davis to release many of the findings in the studies they do at that campus. But since much of the funding for the research comes from private wineries, they’ve also got heat to keep those studies private. I could have sworn I saw an article on this very topic earlier today but it seems to have vanished into the ether.

**Sapo **said

are these 5% the ones I cannot afford or does it happen across the whole range and you just have to know which is which?

It does tend to be the more expensive producers making wines worthy of aging, but not entirely, there are some varietals that have good age potential being made by good wineries and sold at decent price points (say the $20-$60 range.) I tend to think of many Italian wines as falling into this category, but there are some from all over.

The vertical tasting thing - Yea, about the only way to side by side compare aging potential, but it is true that vintage will be a factor. Still better than nothing I guess. Although I think good, detailed notes should at least count for something. And silenus is right, it’s exactly what those high end producers do.

e-logic said

Wine increases in value with age due to its rarity, rather than an improvement in taste, and the overwhelming majority of wines these days are created to be drunk within a year or so of bottling.

This sentence is two-thirds correct. Wine will increase in value as it ages due to rarity, and in fact, most of those wines were already rare when they were released, they just become more so with time. It’s the ‘rather’ in that sentence that I disagree with, making what follows to me incorrect. The wine *will *most likely improve in taste with age, it might not, for many reasons, bum bottle, whatever, but if the stars are aligned, it should. The last part of that sentence is true. Most wines are meant to be drunk when released.
Sapo - I tried to Google that article but no luck. Here’s what turned up for ‘brain scan vinegar wine pleasure’ - 5 words I never would have guessed I’d be googling for together.
Roboto - silenus answered your question too. ‘It depends.’ I can only add my personal experience - there are 3 main wine shops I frequent.
One is the largest and cheapest, if I were to guess I’d say I could probably walk in there right now and pick up something from the 1950s or 1940s. It might be behind glass, but it’s stocked.
The second is a local gourmet food and wine shop - I could probably walk in there and find something from the 1930s but not much older. The gentleman there would be more than happy to order something for me though.
The third is a wine bar and shop that specializes in old and rare bottles (they have a room (think large walk in closet) dedicated to d’Yquem that I ogle every time I’m in there.) I could go there and pick up something from the late 1800s right now (if only I had that kind of cash.) And again, if it exists and is for sale, they can find it for me and would be happy to do so.

Even considering my location (wine central), I think this is what an average consumer in a major metro area could expect to find. Whether they can or choose to purchase such wines is another matter I suppose.

and faster with a permeable cork stopper, rather than a plastic stopper, or screw top

This is true, but it’s shaky ground and a pretty hot topic in the wine industry. Not everyone agrees with what is best for the wine, although it does seem like more and more winemakers prefer screw caps.

From this article (which I found fascinating but is sure to make most folks eyes gloss over):

Survey respondents rated screw caps as having the lowest oxygen transmission Natural corks were rated at the opposite end of the spectrum as having the highest oxygen transmission. Technical corks and synthetic closures occupied the middle ground, with respondents rating technical corks as having slightly more oxygen transmission than synthetic closures.

n-bottle oxidation was a hot topic among the respondents. The results of our survey indicated that winemakers believe screw caps are the best closure for preventing unwanted oxidation. Many responded anecdotally that they have had oxidation problems with pretty much every type of closure other than screw caps. Conversely, several respondents noted that they thought wine developed better if the closure allowed minute amounts of oxygen into the bottle. This, of course, is the traditional view, but perceptions aside, what the small amount of peer-reviewed research seems to indicate is that while the oxygen that passes into the bottle in this “in-bottle micro-oxidation” mainly just binds with sulfur dioxide or any thiols that have formed, it doesn’t appear to be involved in some of the slow reactions, like the polymerization of polyphenols, usually thought to be characteristic of bottle aging.

… the issue was really more complex than might have been implied by the question in the survey. “I view that the oxidation created by the closure will affect the development of the wine. Synthetic corks create the greatest opportunity for oxidation, and screw caps are the best at keeping a wine free of oxidation. Therefore, the type of closure greatly affects the development of the wine. If a winemaker wants oxidation to be part of their wine style, then they should be aware of what the closure will or will not do for them. I grant that few winemakers would choose oxidation as a tool in winemaking; yet by choosing a synthetic cork and a real cork, winemakers are choosing to oxidize their wines at rates that are faster than with a screw cap. So if winemakers are choosing closures that oxidize their wines faster, then they are making a deliberate choice to purposely oxidize their wines and, therefore, affect the development of their wines.”

And to that note, I’ve seen and heard of research and/or advances in screw cap technology that allows winemakers to mimic certain cork grades permeability, making them even more desirable if in fact some kind of oxidation is what they are expecting.
Wow, that’s probably the longest post I’ve ever made here. Hoo-ray for schoolin’ and smashed grapes! Also, I’m not an expert, just a student working in the industry with a passion for the stuff. Which, after all, is just a tasty adult beverage. One that I think will do a fine job of quenching my thirst right now.

[FRDE]

One method of aging wine artificially is to heat it, every so often French vintners get pulled up for heating their cellars.

For some reason half bottles age more quickly than full bottles.

I’ve had some spectacular Spanish reds on aircraft where the bond was hot.

The big danger of an aged wine is that it can oxidize very fast. I was told about a mega wine tasting of something like Rothschild 1898 (at the chateau) - everything was very dignified until the corks were pulled, then it turned into a speeded up movie, pouring and swigging were almost simultaneous. Apparently the stuff went off in seconds.

I once got hold of a good supply of a bin end, the stuff was brilliant for about 15 mins, and then it was acid. Interestingly there was nothing particularly special about it, it was a Bordeaux bottled by a large company for a UK restaurant chain. It was great for a drinks party, but not so hot for a leisurely meal.

I reckon that part of the problem is that not everyone prefers an aged (red) wine, youngish wines tend to have more body and to me a fuller flavour.

Mind you I’m no wine buff, I drink a lot of it, but don’t much care as long as it does not taste like vinegar.

[Sapo]

@psycat90

Sapo - I tried to Google that article but no luck. Here’s what turned up for ‘brain scan vinegar wine pleasure’ - 5 words I never would have guessed I’d be googling for together.

Thanks for all the answers. Although I am suspicious of how you made a whole page of google results with no porn.

If anyone has a paid subscription to the NYT, we might have better luck.