Age-ism

Home
Blogs

$blog.title

$blog.summary

resize text
subscribe via RSS

Age-ism

Posted by: $author under Wine Updated: January 24, 2010 - 12:24 PM

0
comments
print

Tweet
share

email
Email share

your name

your email

recipients email

+ add a comment add a comment

My friend Kent sent me a link to a wonderful piece from merry ol' England, a touching story about a father and son and wine.

A major thread in the story is the ageability of wine and the "windows" for peak quaffing. That's been a semi-frequent topic of discussion of late with my friend Joe. I'm a major skeptic of the "windows," and not just because, like Joe, I love drinking young reds that are supposed to be long-lived.

We can hazard a guess as to the 2007 Clos des Papes' lifespan, but no one (in my view) can say with certainty. The uber-ballyhooed 1997 Napa cabs are a good case in point, a very mixed lot at this point.

Joe and I share a belief that it's better to drink a wine too young than too old, and some cynicism about the accuracy of a Robert Parker proclamation that a wine will, say, be at its best from 2018-2032. I think that there are just too many variables for this to be knowable, ranging from "dead" periods to bottle variation to the fact that wine is a living thing.

And while I have enormous respect for Parker's palate and experience, even the fact that he can cite the 1984 vintage in Pauillac as a precursor for how the 2007 vintage will age is insufficient. They're still not the same thing, starting with the changes in winemaking techniques and equipment, for better or worse when it comes to aging.

Even if it's all intuitive, for me that makes it guesswork. All we can do is drink it and see, which is not such a bad thing, eh?