 |
|
|
 |
in
wine today
Wine
and time. To cellar or to sip?
By
Georges Meekers
While few wines are made for keeping and repay cellaring, the vast
majority of all white and red wines are made to be drunk as young
as possible.
Most wines on the supermarket shelf are best consumed ‘within
six months to a year of purchase', while its youthful fruit can
be enjoyed to the full. It's a myth that all wine improves with
age. As a matter of fact, far more wine is drunk too late than too
early.
The most obvious candidates for long-term ageing in bottle are big
reds, such as many fine Bordeaux (called claret by the British),
botrytised sweet wines, some exceptional fine Loire wines made from
the Chenin Blanc grape, most wines made from the Riesling grape
and grand cru white Burgundy.
In very general terms, the dearer the bottle, the more it will repay
keeping.
But how many people realise that the more expensive bottles of wine
in a shop are probably those least likely to give pleasure that
same evening?
In fact, the red wines which improve on ageing (vins de garde) are
probably worse in their infancy than inferior ones, because they
are usually very high in tannins (that come from grape skin, seeds
and stalks and help wine to age). Only after years of solitude in
your wine cellar or rack, these unpleasant tannins will soften and
the wine will display its extraordinary qualities.
So, unless you pay a fortune for a ready-aged bottle like, for example,
Château Margaux 1982, you might have to wait a lifetime before
it's time to drink your young bottle of Premier Cru.
‘So, can't you suggest some sort of artificial method of quick-ageing
wines?', I hear you ask...
Well, agitation of the wine as a method has been favoured in the
past. There's a story of a French miller's daughter who, for some
reason, decided to get married sooner than her father's wine stock
had matured.
So, the miller did as he had been advised to do and attached two
small barrels of the young wine to the sails of his mill. After
two days of brisk winds, the wine was found to have aged to perfection
and the miller's reputation was saved.
In modern Malta a man might still be judged by the quality of wine
he supplies for his daughter's wedding-feast. However, no matter
how desperate to accommodate, one can no more age wine at will than
rejuvenate man.
|
|
|
