THE PROCESS: AGING THE WINE

AGING THE WINE

There is no perfect time to drink your wines. Wines go through a continuous metamorphosis during maturation and demonstrate several personalities during their lives.

"Bottle shock" is a recognized part of a wine's bottle maturation. This is the indeterminate period of time immediately following bottling when a wine doesn't seem to show many (or any) of its charms. The act of bottling has stunned the wine; indeed, many wine writers and other aficionados refer to this as a "dumb phase." This is the main reason why many recipes usually recommend that you first sample the bottled wine no sooner than one month after bottling.

To draw generalizations about aging would be wasteful. I've tasted kit wines that barely made it out alive after two years (poor quality fruit, I would guess) and I've tasted others that were finally showing the true character of the wine after four years. Some of these wines lived for a decade or longer.

For general health, check your "index" bottle frequently. Look for signs of crystallization. Potassium bitartrate crystals look like little beads or flakes of ice or glass, depending on how fine is the crystal formation. These crystals are odorless, flavorless and impart nothing harmful to the wine. These crystals are easier to detect in the white wines, but they do also form in the reds, along with other sedimentary deposits such as tannins, polyphenols and pigmentation molecules.

Dry wines seem to manifest these crystals faster than sweet wines. Also look for sedimentation in your red wines. Generally, the appearance of a more compact and isolated deposit bodes better than an ashy, scattered deposit (this type of sediment may suggest a renewed fermentation in the bottled wine). Whereas crystal occurrence can be considered as a sign of goodness in old and famous vintage wines, it is usually thought of as a serious failure for most consumers, even though it does not alter wine quality.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A WINE AGES?

As a wine ages, it loses what is known as its fresh, forward fruit character. In place of expressive fruitiness, an aged wine takes on more subtle flavors that often defy description. Such flavors are the result of various molecules combining and coalescing with each other in unpredictable ways. Sometimes these aged flavors are gorgeous and refined. Sometimes the wine just ends up tasting like a shadow of its former self. So don’t assume all wines must be aged, as many are at their best when young.