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Lizzie, our web guru, has asked me to reply to a question about why wine improves with age. Someone asked the question on a forum, and the Wikipedia answer in response was “When properly stored, wines not only maintain their quality but many actually improve in aroma, flavour, and complexity as they mature.” Not very helpful.
And of course it isn’t true of all wines - in fact it isn’t true of most wines. It’s easier to understand if we restrict ourselves initially to red wines.
Let’s Look At Red Wine
Glass of red wine
Wines do change over time, but mostly that just means they go off. Most obviously, their colour degrades. If you take a wine from last year, and compare it with a 2004, for example, you’ll see the new wine is very purple.
Although on their own they’ll both look a lovely, deep red (assuming they’re any good), comparing one with the other, you should easily be able to decide that one is ‘purple‘, the other ‘ruby‘.
This colour degradation will continue over time until the wine becomes almost brown, and eventually begins to break down and appear as sediment in solution.
Tannins
The way to slow down this degradation is to have high tannin levels in the wine to start with - the tannins give structure to the wine, and allow it to be stored for a long period of time.
This doesn’t mean that adding a lot of tannin to any wine means it can be kept for decades. The balancing act is that if a wine is to be stored over a long period, it must have high tannin levels. With high tannin levels from the pips and skins, the wine can be stored longer in oak, and even in new oak, without overpowering the wine. Length of time in oak, and the use of new oak, both add to tannin content of a wine.
Cabernet Sauvignon
The classic red wine grape with high tannin content is cabernet sauvignon. This is the traditional grape used to add ‘structure’ to a wine. That’s why clarets can be stored for so long.
Wine makers in Chianti found that improving techniques were producing wines worth keeping longer. So they introduced small amounts of cabernet sauvignon to give the wine the necessary structure to hold it all together while the wine aged and mellowed.
But Not All Wines Improve With Age
So, not all wines improve with age. As I’ve explained, if a wine does improve with age, it needs high levels of tannin to provide the structure that prevents the wine from degrading.
Then it’s a question of luck - does all that tannin from the grapes and the barrels produce a taste that is pleasing on the palate? High levels of tannin in a young wine taste very bitter - you can gauge the level of tannin by swilling the wine around the front of your teeth. If they feel rough and dry, that’s tannin, a foolproof test.
Wine Warning
These wines need to be left for the maturing process to work its miracle. That’s why some wines come with a warning - not to be drunk for 5, 10 or even 15 years. Almost always this means the winemaker has decided that the best this wine can ever get is if it is matured for x years with y amount of tannins from leaving the wine on the skins, and z amount of tannins from storing in oak for a certain amount of time, with a certain percentage of new oak.
Changing any of these variables will change the time when the wine is at its optimum, but the pleasantness of the wine at the new optimum will be less, in the view of the winemaker.
And the longer the winemaker has decided is the optimum time, the more undrinkable the wine will be as a young wine. For example, a really high quality Pauillac like Mouton Rothschild will be primarily cabernet sauvignon, kept for a while on the skins and stored primarily in new oak. After 12 years it will be mellow and beautiful. After 3 years it would be very bitter indeed.
It’s About Balance Too
But you can’t take a Vin de Pays de l’Herault, or an ordinary Pinotage from California, leave the skins in, use lots of new oak and store it for 20 years. Yuk! Very, very acidic, with no balancing fruit. It’s about balance. Is the wine fruity enough to take a heavy dose of tannin sufficient to store it for long enough to allow the fruit and the acid to evolve to equilibrium? That’s a wine you can age - and it sounds very much like a good quality claret to me!
Square in Bordeaux
A Tour for Lovers of Wine
This was the 2nd tour that we designed. Running the Dordogne tour in 1997 awoke my interest in wine, and inevitably I started reading about the wines of Bordeaux, the greatest wine producing region in the world.
My first plan was to visit the main regions of Bordeaux wine production, namely, St Emilion, the Médoc, Haut Médoc, Graves, Sauternes and the vast but unsung vineyards of Entre Deux Mers.
Stephane and I set off driving around, stopping at hotels, reading wine books, buying armfuls of maps and visiting every Office Du Tourisme we could find.
Our original plan encountered problems. There’s nowhere to stay in Entre Deux Mers. All the roads that lead to Sauternes are too busy and horrible. And the biggest problem of all - Bordeaux’s in the way! It’s too big, there are bottlenecks caused by the Gironde and the two rivers of the Garonne and the Dordogne, and it’s just not nice to cycle there.
So we ended up going back to the drawing board. Stephane knew the area around Bergerac and Ste Foy as far as St Emilion. One look at St Emilion and I was hooked. It’s such a beautiful and atmospheric place, surrounded by very picturesque vineyards. And then we discovered the ferry that crosses the Gironde from Blaye to Lamarque in the Haut Médoc, and the whole route came together.
The Cleverest Bike Tour - The Best Wine Tour
Vineyards in Bordeaux
Of all of our tours, all 7 of them, Bordeaux is the cleverest - the one which took the most work, the most calculation and measurement, and the most visiting and organising.
And in 10 years I don’t think I’ve seen a better ‘wine’ tour anywhere.
Walking vineyard tours are no good for me, you just can’t travel far enough. And coaches really don’t do it for me! And on our trip we meet such a variety of winemakers, and taste such a variety of wines.
Bergerac
In Bergerac, the wines are simple, everyday wines, red, and white and rosé. But even within Bergerac, there are special nuggets to explore, like Pécharment, and the beautiful, deliciously sweet wines of Monbazillac.
The Outlying Vineyards of Bordeaux
Further down the Dordogne we stay in the Bastide of Ste Foy la Grande, home of Bordeaux Ste Foy, the most outlying of all the ‘Bordeaux’ vineyards. We cycle through Montravel, with its white and red wines, and more beautiful dessert wines, then through the Cotes de Castillon, again ordinary wines where the surprise is just how good some of the wines are, and how skilful and dedicated the vignerons, the winemakers.
Castillon is literally a road-width from St Emilion - it should be no surprise the wines are good, but they can’t put ‘St Emilion’ on the label - that means bargain time for you and me.
St Emilion
Then we’re on the climb to St Emilion and Pomerol, whose wines need no introduction.
Next we cycle through Fronsac, a historic pocket of quality on the right bank of the Dordogne, before cycling through the emerging appellations of Côtes de Bourg and Côtes de Blaye (if you’re interested, Bourg is usually considered slightly upmarket, but I prefer Blaye because I like Blaye and know some of the growers - so choose Côtes de Blaye!).
A shop in St Emilion
The Haut Médoc
By now we’re among the historic clarets of the Haut Médoc, the real heavyweights of world wine. People talk about Burgundy, and New World wines, but to paraphrase my Dad, no vineyard owner in the Haut Médoc ever woke up and wondered what it might be like to own a vineyard in the Napa Valley.
And finally we come down the quality scale a little with a day in the vineyards of the Médoc, historically known as the ‘Bas Médoc’, or low medoc, but they didn’t like the connotations, so simple Médoc it is.
A Totally French Wine Experience
It’s such a fabulous exploration of styles and prices and techniques of wine. Every single time we run the Bordeaux Winetrail it’s an education - and can you imagine a nicer classroom than the vineyards and tasting rooms of the Dordogne, St Emilion and the médoc? No, me neither.
