Will a Merlot age well for 10-20 years.??

Some Merlots can age well for many decades. In fact the extremely expensive Bordeaux, Chateau Petrus, is a Merlot.

Most wines in the lower price range are made to be drinkable fairly soon after release. Some may improve a bit for a few years, but most will start to fade if you age them for many years. I would not buy the mentioned Columbia Crest Merlot, or most others in that price range, for long aging. Every now and then you can be fooled and an inexpensive, early-drinkable wine will last quite a few years and improve, but more often not. On the other hand, many wines built for long aging can be a bit harsh in their youth and difficult to evaluate. However a harsh wine in youth may not age well either. It takes considerable experience over many years to be able to taste a young wine and predict how it will age. Even the experts sometimes miss.

Excellent points all around. Might I also point out to the OP that while you'd probably be safe holding a Columbia Crest Merlot for a couple of years if you had reasonably cool storage (I can't think of a red outside Beaujolais Nouveau that goes that quickly), even if it lasted longer you might not like it. As wines age fruit lessens, secondary and tertiary aromas emerge, tannins integrate, etc. So even if a so-called expert or an opinionated amateur like myself declared that it had aged well, you might find that all the things you found appealing about it were gone!

Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

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And over and above all of that, even if the wine didn't change at all, after ten years he might well find that his taste had changed and grown, so that this particular wine was no longer as appealing.

Most importantly, the wine is cheap. I say go ahead and save half a case for

Another idea is to talk to the folks at Columbia Crest. I am sure they have old wines in their library. Ask them what they think.

Dimitri