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Subject: Early decanting and aging assessment of wines

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Dr_Tannin

Barrel Sampler
Posts:2498

09/05/2004 2:52 AM
Squires' web site periodically presents interesting scientific threads I unfortunately too rarely see here, but are worth discussing. I have never read anything scientific on the correlation between decanting a young wine and assessing its' ageability. Comments are purely anecdotal by amateurs. Yet, people comment on this all the time as if there was one to one correlation. Example: This wine opened up at 10 hours and drank very well the next day and should develop into a great wine. I believe this is potentially misleading since how well a wine ages depends on slow integration of tannins with fruit and other polyphenols and chemicals. Rapid oxidative decanting is dissimilar chemically. That doesn't mean there is no correlation... ...but I have never read or heard anything scientific to comment lt alone validate a link between the two. Any one have any useful references? Or are we sheep following the myth of past "expert" quotes.

skwid

Wine Connoisseur
Posts:5452

09/05/2004 3:44 AM
I think we are sheep. The chemical processes going on in wine are still not fully understood and are quite complex so there are lots of variables many of which are difficult to control (time in bottle, temp bottle was stored at, temp of decant, time decant, air surface area of decant, ...). As amateurs I'm not sure we can setup a good control group for something like this. We can only guess at these things (even the pros are sometimes off on their "drink at X time" dates.

ChangeMe

Master of Wine
Posts:11169

09/05/2004 4:16 AM
I think we're extremely fortunate at this site to have so many experts here who open two year old Rhones, Burgundies, and Bordeaux and are kind enough to tell us how these wines will develop. Actually, it's a source of great amusement to me one of my closest friends in the wine business. Together, we have been following wines from these regions for thirty years and we realize that there is nothing more difficult in wine tasting than to predict the future of a young Rhone or Burgundy. Fortunately, this place is rife with people who think they have this ability.

David Niederauer User is Offline

Los Gatos, CA

Master Sommelier
Posts:15756

09/05/2004 5:43 AM
I believe that anyone who thinks they can tell how a wine will age and/or how long it should be decanted is fooling themselves. Even the professional experts are only making a SWAG. There are just too many variations. Ten days ago I tasted from four different bottles of 1985 Dunn Howell Mountain. Everyone of them had aged differently. There was at least a 10 point swing between the best bottle and the worst. All were bought directly from the winery on release and stored next to each other their entire life. There is just no way to accurately predict when a wine will reach its peak. That said, I really appreciate the SWAGs that VC members give. I put that together with my own SWAG and and maybe have something to at least write on the log page of the wine. Only time can tell.

Pool Boy

Laurl, MD (DC suburb)

Master of Wine
Posts:13707

09/05/2004 5:59 PM
Quote: I think we are sheep. I agree. Still, it is fun the off the cuff guess.

www.roguefood.com -- www.cellartracker.com

ChangeMe

Barrel Filler
Posts:1475

09/05/2004 7:48 PM
I like other people's predictions. You just need to take them with the appropriate grain of salt. I also like making my own predictions... obviously they are not always right, but right or wrong, they are a tool for learning more about how wines age, and how my palate discriminates between younger and older wines.

ChangeMe

Grape Stomper
Posts:152

09/06/2004 8:01 AM
Agree with everything said. If anything, you can make an educated guess about the knowledgeability of the one who makes statements about decanting/aging, but that's it.

ChangeMe

Master of Wine
Posts:12891

09/06/2004 2:04 PM
just buy enough that you can taste one every year or work into your guesstimate the advice of a expert.

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