Cellaring Times

I have always assume it was bottle time post release.

Like in the 95 brunello reserves have had 3-4 years of cellar time?

It depends. Strictly speaking, total cellaring time begins when the grapes are crushed. Within weeks of then the wine sits in cask in the cellar of the winery where it may remain for one to four years - sometimes longer - before bottling.

OTOH, winemakers sometimes recommend cellaring time for optimum enjoyment of their wines at maturity. That would generally be from the time the wine was released to the market, and assumes normal wine cellar conditions. In your example that would be 2000+5, at which time your 1998 vintage wine would be

Tom S

How do you know when a wine was bottled? Or when it was released? Usually the vintage date is the only one known because bottling and release dates are not printed on the label. Therefore I always count X years from the vintage date.

Well - this, to me, is the most reasonable and valid way of measuring cellaring time because, as you say, the vintage is the only concrete piece of information you have about the wine. I was wondering if this was standard or not.

Cellaring time is counted from vintage year. Which is the only explicit indication on the bottle.

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

To me, it depends on who's talking about it. When I see Paul Draper's advice on the back label of Ridge wines, I do assume that he means time from harvest when talking about cellaring time. OTOH, when a critic like Robert Parker talks about wine reaching maturity in 5-10 years, I assume that he means from the time of the review (which is also dated). I can't say that I've ever seen any "official" ruling on the subject, though. I also take all such advice with a liberal dose of salt, since the temperature at which you store the wine (and perhaps the amount of variation in that temperature) will change the rate of development of the wine and hence it's "drinking plateau."

Mark Lipton

AND, one also has to consider how they like a particular wine, grape, or blend. If they are talking about a Chardonnay, or maybe a Zinfandel (just two examples of many), they may like them young with vibrant fruit, or may like some years on them, where many aspects "meld" together. My guess is that most lists are rough expectations from the winemaker, as to a point, at which aspects like tannins will abate and smooth out, while fruit will still be very much in evidence - just a guide based on knowledge of the wine in tastings by the staff, and not necessarily how a consumer might like it. Probably, buying several bottles of a wine that one likes, or expects to like, then monitoring its changes/developments is the best way to judge.

Some years ago, I did a tasting of Gil Nickles' Cabs and Chards from his Far Niente lable. Of the twenty, or so, folk in the tasting, I liked the younger Chards, because of their intense fruit, but choose the older Cabs. Everyone else liked the smooth, well-balanced older Chards, and went for the young Cabs, for their "aging potential." It was 19:1 in each case. I had no problems with all of the others' choices, but they were not mine.

Hunt

No probably about it: the soundest strategy toward finding a wine's optimum drinking window is to buy several bottles (3+) and open one periodically to judge the wine's progress. Of course, to know "optimal" one must be willing to hold at least one bottle into its decline, but sacrifices must be made in the name of science ;-)

Yeah, I've been the one dissenter in a number of tastings, usually when I prefer the old, funky French wine to the young, oaky fruitbomb it's being compared to.

Mark Lipton

"Hunt" in news: snipped-for-privacy@news3.newsguy.com...

That's an excellent point, Hunt. Surely many of us see this when we are trying to assess wines seriously to our own taste. In blind tastings of new products on the market (which I do regularly), exactly as with your account above, I sometimes find myself preferring a wine because of its appeal right now, but sometimes because it's obviously an ager with a future full of promise.

This underscores the problem of comparing wine assessments, each of which is distilled into a single ranking or number. It reveals little about weights or preferences that went in to it, what wines it was tasted with, etc etc.

-- Max

Yes, that is one good reason for my liking DaleW's TNs and ratings, vis-a-vis, say the WS 100pt scale. I care less about a grade, and more about what it is that I am likely to encounter. Don't tell that RP gave some wine 95pts, just tell me what it tastes like.

Hunt