There is a widely circulated belief that the longer you keep a wine bottle, the better will the wine get. It is not necessarily this way. Let us see why we are actually storing the wine in the first place, and then you will be able to understand the importance of the time kept between preparing the wine and drinking it.
Time is give in order to age the product to make it better than the original. This is not applicable only to wine, but also to cheese, to meet, and so on. This aging habit originates in the past because people back then has to use whatever available for making the wine. Because, they depended totally on the Providence for what their mix for wine was, they needed to give sufficient time to the wine to age to become palatable. This time that was given to the wine to become palatable post fermentation has come to be known as aging period.
This theory has been proved by the fact the there are many old wines sold today (above 50 years or so) which are completely drinkable. However, this might not be so because the wine was okay when it was bottled; rather it was too harsh for consumption, so harsh that it took some 20-50 years to become palatable. Some need 100 years to become ‘good wines’ – and you can imagine how much money you will need to keep wine for so long in storage.
Applying today’s modern technology grapes cultivation has seen a lot of changes, as has the production of wine. Today, wine can be drunk almost as soon as it is bottled, though some of the wines would benefit by aging it a few years. There is a demand for wines that need long ‘incubation’ period, but the world is moving fast into the era when they want a fresh wine on the table without worrying when it was bottled and how long would I have to wait before I can have it.
There are some wines which will need some 2-3 years to reach their peak potential while some take about 5-7 years to reach that level. The critical point is to know about what time each type of wine needs to fulfill its potential or you will loose the wine bottle. There are many people who hang on to a ‘good’ bottle of wine for years and years, only to find out then they open it that it has separated into sediment and some inconclusive liquid.
The best time to wait before you have your wine is at best a few years from the bottling, unless it is mentioned otherwise. Do not get into the idea that the more the wine is kept the better it would taste. That period of time is over. The modern technology of wine production and the grapes we grow today, do not need decades of aging before developing into a world-class wine. wine tours Willamette Valley