Comparisons to fine wine abound when it comes to aging gracefully, but is the analogy justified? Do all wines age well? Does aging potential come from the wine, the storage or both? In this article, let’s get to the bottom of the so-called barrel to understand the realities of wine aging and dispel some myths along the way. Is older always better? Well, that depends.

My late father-in-law and I always loved to talk about wine. As an Italian, he had lived his entire life in the epicenter of viticulture. But like most Italians, his experience was limited to Italian wines. He had never tried a Bordeaux, and it was not due to lack of interest or curiosity. Italy abounds with more wine styles than any country on the planet. There are wines that are so rare, and regional, you won’t even find them in other parts of the country, let alone in the US. He was well versed in variety, but only Italian variety. For this, Italy is mostly devoid of wines from abroad. As a side note, this is something US wine drinkers undervalue. Any well-stocked wine store has a selection that spans from California to the Bordeaux region of France, Piedmont and Tuscany in Italy, Spain, Australia and so on. But that is a conversation for another article.

Anyway, having grown up in the US, I was excited to introduce him to different wines, so I started searching. That was when I learned the truth about the abject lack of foreign wines. Then one day in fall 2022, I was in a wine store in a small town about 45 minutes from Rome. The selection was not that big so I was not even looking for something out of the ordinary. Then to my surprise, I saw a 2008 Bordeaux beckoning to me, and it was the only Bordeaux they had. Naturally, I got excited, but my enthusiasm lasted only a few seconds. While I was thrilled to find one, the age of the wine immediately made me doubt the integrity of the bottle. It cost about 13 euros which is about 15 US dollars. I thought, for the price, it was worth the risk. However, since the bottle was for a special dinner he was preparing that evening, I decided to get a backup bottle just in case.

When we arrived, I enthusiastically shared the news, but that was followed by my concerns. He was still cooking, and I could not wait to open the bottle. The moment the cork popped, there was a moment of silence, and then it hit me. It hit both of us. The aromas were not pleasant. There was a nail polish smell with vinegary undertones. Against my better judgment, I poured out a bit into a wine glass. The smell was even worse and when I held it to the light, the edge of the wine was an amber color, and the wine was brackish (brown.) Just out of morbid curiosity, I tried a sip. What went into my mouth got spat out into the sink. It was a flat, syrupy awful mess. The only thing I achieved was giving my father in law a good laugh at my expense.

My suspicions based on the age of the bottle were confirmed but the more important question is how did I know? Secondly, how was I so sure that I even bought an extra bottle, which was very good by the way. But I was still disappointed about the Bordeaux, and I knew that 14 years was too long to wait. That bottle had peaked about six years earlier and had since been declining. It was probably already undrinkable at ten years old. So how did a Bordeaux, one of the international pillars of red wine not even make it past a decade before turning to sludge? Was it just a fluke? The answer to that question is a resounding no, hence my suspicions. 

A few years prior, I found a ten-year-old Brunello in a New Jersey wine shop. I was reserved about that bottle too for the same reason, but I still gave it a shot. Alas, when I opened it, it was the same problem. I put the cork back in and brought it back to the store for exchange. They were surprised I returned it but Brunello is not cheap. Still, Brunello is another wine that is supposed to be able to age for decades but this one was as flat as a tire that had crossed paths with Wiley Coyote, in just ten years. The truth is that I have had many experiences with older wines and most of them have been disappointing, but not all of them, and I wanted to understand why. Serendipitously, a short vacation provided some insight.

Last year I visited Montalcino in Tuscany and stayed at a Brunello vineyard with my family. Our stay came with a wine tasting. The wine cellar was glorious but chilly. We needed jackets because it was 53 degrees Fahrenheit. The tasting was a journey through time. He had wines as young as the previous year that were still in large barrels and bottled wines that went back to 2011 for the tasting! He had originally suggested that we start with the older wines, but I asked if we could do the reverse. I wanted to taste the wines young to help me conceptualize what happens as they age. I also wanted to see if I would be disappointed.

The younger wines were still very good, but the acidity and tannins were aggressive. You could tell they needed time. Each wine from the previous year demonstrated a mellowing that was evident. I was especially curious about the wines at the eight-year mark and older. In my experience, 8 years seemed to be the age threshold. As a wine drinker who prefers my wines on the younger side, I expected increasingly negative reactions as I ventured from 2015 back to 2011. But that is not what happened. The wine just kept getting better. The 2011 Brunello was by far the best of them all, and it was 12 years old. With each successive year, the acidity softened, and the complexity increased. This led to an in-depth conversation with Francesco the winemaker. I shared my disappointing experiences and he was quick to offer explanation. The 2011 was so good because it had never left his wine cellar. It had remained at 53 degrees since the day it was pressed. Once it did leave the cellar, it would need to remain at that temperature if it was to be aged longer. Otherwise, drink it quickly. The wines from my previous experiences were store-bought, all but condemning them to early death.

He explained that wine cannot be exposed to room temperature for any length of time if it is to have long-term aging potential. The older it is, the more dangerous temperature shock becomes. Just a few months at room temperature could change the 2011 Brunello entirely, and not for the better. He said that my bad experiences were due to fluctuations in temperatures from being in a warehouse and then a store. Italians are not hip to air conditioning. So, imagine the temperature range that bottle of Bordeaux had experienced as it waited on the shelf for me to buy it.

There are many running theories about what makes wine age well over decades or even centuries. However, there is probably the most consensus about storage temperatures. The older wine gets, the more its chemical structure breaks down. With each passing year, stability becomes more and more important. The wine writer and auctioneer Michael Broadbent spoke of a white wine carbon dated to 1670. It was only 6% ABV which does not fit the profile of a wine we would think could age. However, that was not the case and judging by the color alone, it was in perfect condition. The wine had spent centuries packed in London clay. There was no temperature fluctuation, no light and it was damp. The storage conditions were ideal, and the wine endured. 

While storage conditions top the list, there are other factors like acidity, ABV, tannins and growing conditions that complicate the conversation. Though all these factors contribute, not one can be singled out to explain why some wines age well and others do not, even with proper cellaring. But this gets even more confusing with modern wines.

One unlikely cause for fast aging is modern winemaking techniques. Wine today is made to be drunk as fast as possible for economic reasons. Less aging means less cellaring and lower costs. For this, we are in uncharted territory. We do not know how the Brunello or Bordeaux wines of today will taste in 40 years. Up until the middle of the 20th century, wines were made using old world techniques, and many were fortified to preserve them. They were not using commercial yeast nor were they filtering or using fining agents. There is an argument that says that wine today is too clean, that to age, the wine needs food. Modern techniques strip out materials like fine sediment that sustain the wine long-term. High tannins can also factor. Traditional Barolo winemaking techniques called for leaving the wine on the skins for 90 days! This is no longer done because of cost. Imagine the tannins with that much skin exposure and the price of the bottle after needing two decades in a wine cellar before it could even be sold. Old world Barolo wines were probably undrinkable for their first 20 years. While it is true that tannins form longer and longer chains over time, even that process peaks and the tannin chains start to break down. This is another example of the “food” a bottle needs to age for centuries.

Before we get lost in a discourse that is too involved for a single article, let’s bring this conversation back to what this means for home winemakers. Most of us are using cultured yeast, fining agents, filtering systems and we don’t have caves dug out of solid rock under our houses. Most of us are aging our wines in environments with temps much warmer than a wine cellar. Thus, our aging parameters are very limited to the conditions we can provide for the wine, its character and how we make it.

Yet we should be cautious about long term aging. Not only is aged wine an acquired taste, it is contrary to the flavor profiles that modern wine drinkers are accustomed to today. Older wine tends to lose fruitiness. If you like your wine fruit forward with crisp acidity, you will probably not like aged wine. Still, you are going to let a big bodied red age at least a little before you drink it. When wine is very young, it tends to be boring. The dominant flavors and aromas right after bottling are overpowering and one dimensional. Just a few years allow those characteristics to relax revealing a lot more subtlety. That said, our drinkability windows today are a lot shorter than wines from decades and centuries past.

Therefore, aging potential can be gaged with a few simple metrics. A higher alcohol red or white can typically be aged longer. Though tannins also help with reds, whites can compensate for not having them with higher acidity. Your bigger bodied wines with higher ABV’s will peak between 5 and 7 years. Wines with lower acidity and a low ABV will peak at 2-3 years. Medium body and ABV wines are 3-5 years. The maximum you have on big-bodied wines is about 8 years. Then they will start to decline, even with adequate sulfite levels. Homemade wines tend to have 25-50 ppm of sulfites and they are typically drunk within the first 2 years. Commercial wines have a minimum of 75 ppm and wines intended to be aged longer typically range between 100 and 150 ppm. If you are making a wine that you plan to age longer, make sure your sulfite levels are adequate.

Higher temperatures in the modern home are by far the most impacting with wine aging. Temperature is an accelerator. The higher the temperature, the faster the wine ages. These timelines apply to homemade wines and commercial wines purchased at your local retailer. We are in a different dynamic today. Wine is not made to be aged and most home storage is not suited to facilitate it. But remember, even this simplified criteria is not an exact science. Do not assume that higher alcohol always means longer aging. Alcohol has its own taste and if your wine lacks other characteristics to balance it, longer aging might eventually become detrimental. The alcohol will continue to dissolve other compounds which could eventually make it too dominant in the flavor profile.

In conclusion, now you know that that if you have not liked older wines, it is not just you. Aging wine is an art in and of itself. The right wine under the right conditions can age and become remarkable over long periods of time. If your winemaking space has temperatures in the sweet spot of 52-57 Degrees Fahrenheit, and they do not fluctuate, you can try pushing that envelope. However, if you make a batch with long term aging in mind, bottle some of it in small quantities so you can taste it periodically. Take notes and be prepared to start drinking it if your palate tells you, it’s time. Furthermore, you probably should avoid filtering the wine or using fining agents. Let it bulk age and clear with gravity. Even if you take all these steps, there is still no telling where the wine will go. Wine today has as much as 50 additives that old world wine did not. That dramatically changes the chemical composition of modern wine. We simply do not know yet how wines today will age. Regardless, unless you have the right conditions and your process accounts for potential aging, the long haul might just be out of reach. Wine is alive and like all living things, it matures, peaks, declines and eventually dies. By understanding the character of your wine, you can know if it should be aged and how long you should age it. But if nothing else, we have dispelled the myth that older is always better. It isn’t, and you will enjoy your wine much more knowing that. So, experiment and always be ready to pivot. Cheers!