How to Tune into a Wine’s Prime Drinking Time

Great wines are alive. They are born of the grapes – which ferment into wine – which then ages in the barrel. And then ages in the bottle…and ages… and ages. Predicting how long anything will live is a difficult science. A quality wine is certain to have a degree of longevity depending on varietal. Mira wines are built to last, ready to drink upon release, but will continue to evolve in some cases for decades. Is an exact date possible? Read the Wall Street Journal “How to Tune into a Wine’s Prime Drinking Time” and you be the judge.

Excerpt below or you can read the full article at the Wall Street Journal here.

How to Tune into a Wine’s Prime Drinking Time

You can open that bottle now—or you can hold off and wait until the peak of its drinking window, when the aromas have deepened to a more complex bouquet

By: Lettie Teague | Updated July 4, 2014

Although just about every wine in the world is created to be consumed within a year or two of its release, one of the most frequent questions that wine merchants field is “When should I drink this?” The reply can range from the vague (e.g., “anytime over the next decade”) to the rather specific (e.g., “in 2016”).

There’s a great deal of anxiety among oenophiles about ideal consumption time, especially if it’s a fancy bottle with a sizable price tag. Wine merchants are happy to offer advice—or at least they feel obliged to do so quite often. As Joe Salamone, wine buyer of Crush Wine & Spirits in New York, said, “For people who sell wine, it’s almost compulsory to provide drinking windows.”

“Drinking window” is the phrase that describes the period when a wine is considered to be in its prime. It could cover a year or two, or it may span several decades, depending on the wine, the vintage and the taste preference of the person making the assessment. Some reviewers err on the side of caution and suggest drinking a wine while it’s still fairly young, while others might offer windows that are several decades wide.

There’s nothing like drinking a wine at exactly the right time—when the tannins have softened but the fruit is still bright, and the aromas have broadened to a more complex bouquet. Wines that are several years old acquire more complex secondary aromas and flavors beyond fruit. These might include notes of tobacco, spice and earth.

Mr. Salamone almost always includes drinking windows in his email offers to his customers. They are the result of his long history of tasting a particular wine—often at the winery where it was made. He thinks that when it comes to the accuracy of a drinking window, wine drinkers need to know if they are “dealing with a wine merchant with some experience, who knows the estate and has tasted older bottles and knows how they mature.” At the same time, Mr. Salamone believes that drinking windows are more guide than gospel.

Read the full article at the Wall Street Journal here.

Join the Mira Winery 
Email List

linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram