In every worthwhile bottle of red wine there is a genie!
But unlike other genies, this genie is in the wine that's in the bottle. And, unlike other genies that escape from confinement at the first opportunity and cannot be put back, the red-wine genie is quite timid - he likes it where he is and has to be coaxed out.
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Oxygen will get the genie out of the young bottle of wine - it will kill the genie in the old bottle!
Wine is a often described as "living", but, in fact, it is unstable - it is changed, for better or worse, by oxygen rather than by time alone. Wine stored in a tank that is blanketed with nitrogen hardly ages at all.
So you ask "How does oxygen get into the bottle?" Through the cork! It is not a perfect seal. Every time the temperature changes, the pressure in the bottle changes and a tiny amount of air leaks in or out. Don't believe me? Look at an old bottle of wine - invariably the level of wine is down - maybe even to the shoulder in an very old bottle. How did the wine get out? Through the cork!
Tannin, the astringent, puckery component of red wine is extracted from the grape skins during fermentation. It protects the wine by grabbing the oxygen before the oxygen grabs the wine and, in so doing, the tannins are sacrificed - they are oxidized and contribute to the sediment that you may find in an older wine (and sometimes even in a young wine).
The chemistry of wine maturation and aging is much more complex than my simplistic description, but suffice it to say that oxygen changes wine, at first making it more appealing, and eventually less appealing, to our senses of taste and smell.
Sweet white wine is an exception to the last part of that statement. Oxidation adds another level of complexity to sweet wine. Old Ch.d'Yquem for example is bronze to brown in color due to oxidation and it can be utterly sublime. Dark Sherry and, especially, Madiera are also oxidized wines, and from the latter comes the term "maderized" or oxidized. A little oxidation imparts the much-loved vanilla or buttery flavor to Chardonnay, which is of course is dry, but beyond a certain point oxidation in a dry white wine turns extremely unpleasant.
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For years I and others have been urging that red wine be opened ahead of time to let it breathe. But I recently concluded that that is inadequate advice.
Wine has no ability to breathe. Air will diffuse into the wine, and volatile components, like sulfur-dioxide, will escape through the exposed surface. Pulling the cork exposes, to the air, only the small surface of wine in the neck of the bottle. The wine in the bottom of the bottle doesn't "know" that the cork has been pulled and it would take days, if not weeks, for oxygen to infiltrate the entire bottle and react with the wine. If the bottle is half-full you might detect a difference in a few hours, but more likely only after a day or more, and going to the extreme, a half inch left in the bottom of a newly opened bottle may be undrinkable within a day or two.
DECANT any halfway decent red - not to remove sediment but to aerate and let the genie out of the bottle.
Open the bottle and pour it into a glass water pitcher, preferably one with a narrow spout so that you can directly return the wine to the bottle and THEN let it breathe (react with the oxygen entrapped by decanting). If in doubt do it several times and pour from as high as you can without splashing (to keep peace in the family, I suggest that the decanting be done over the sink!). Of course you could leave it in the decanter if you are going to drink it all at one sitting. (Do not leave wine in a lead crystal decanter for any length of time.)
DO NOT DECANT AN OLD WINE - it may well die before you get it in a glass, let alone in your mouth.
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A picture is worth a thousand words, so I am offering the following graphical representation of what happens to the red-wine genie during his stay in the bottle and to some extent what happens when you decant before drinking.. It should help in understanding and enjoying red wine.
The graph tracks three taste components of red wine -
Acidity (sharpness as in apples);
Tannin (as in "pucker power").
Fruit (or flavor);
The horizontal (time) and vertical (value) axes have no scales - they are merely illustrative.
Broadly speaking, red wine exhibits two kinds of fruit flavors:
Fresh Fruit Flavors (+-+-+)
Blackberries, cherries, raspberries etc, become more intense and complex at first, then level off, eventually decline,
and finally disappear.
Woody/Nutty Flavors (___)
I say Woody/Nutty for simplicity because these flavors are often much more complex. You may find earthy, mushroomy, leathery, tobacco, cigar-box, and even faded violets. Usually imperceptible in young wines, but they become more and more apparent as the wine ages (oxidizes).
Flavor is what we are looking for and it is important to note that the Fresh Fruit Flavors reach a plateau and then gradually decline, eventually, perhaps, being replaced by the Woody/Nutty flavors.
As a wine drinker looking for the optimum pleasure from your purchase, you have two options; to try to drink at or near the peak of the fresh fruit flavors or aim for the peak of the nutty woody flavors. The latter could be utterly sublime or it could be disappointing, depending on the wine. A first growth Bordeaux or a Premier Cru Burgundy would be more likely to repay your patience.
One of the fascinations of wine is that there is no telling with any degree of certainty how a wine will age - we make our best guesses based on past experience.
Lets put the time frame into some perspective - we are looking at the Fresh Fruit peak in the range of 3 to 10 years and the peak of Woody/Nutty in 5 to 20 years. Remember that, unless the wine is flawed, perceptible changes occur over months and years - certainly not weeks.
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Color is a good indicator of the age of a wine - not much its chronological age, but its physiological age. It can best be observed by tilting the glass over a white background and looking down at the region where wine and glass meet. A young wine will be bright purple. As it ages it becomes red, then brick-red, then orange and; finally, in old age and decrepitude, brown.
TOPICS:1. If a wine is drinking nicely I would tend to enjoy what you have rather than wait - you may wait too long, or it may turn out that there was nothing to wait for.
2. Think carefully before buying a single bottle to lay down - you will invariably wait too long simply because "when it is gone, its gone". The corollary of that advice is never lay down a case without sampling a bottle when you purchased it, and at regular intervals thereafter.
You will be surprised at how well you will recall the wine at each stage and you will gain invaluable insight into the process of wine aging.
Be aware that the Fresh Fruit and Woody Nutty phases do not necessarily over-lap - you may well encounter a "dumb" phase where there is nothing but tannin and acid - try another bottle (if you were smart enough to buy more than one!) after six months or a year and you may be in for a pleasant surprise.
Finally, be aware of bottle-to-bottle variation - it happens sometimes but not often. More importantly, be aware of "taster variation". For whatever reason, not as obvious as a cold, there are days when I simply do not taste well! Might be how I slept, what I ate last night - who knows, but it happens.
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