The Eternal Question

Not really eternal, of course, it's just that the question has been around for as long as we've been in the business.  And the question is - How long should I hold on to this bottle?   And for the sake of narrowing things down, let's say we're talking about California Cabernet Sauvignon.

Fifty years ago Hugh Johnson in his Encyclopedia of Wine would have said only three percent of French wines would improve with age.  That is all.  No others.  Now in the modern, more sophisticated wine culture of today, we have recently read that maybe one percent of the great wines of the world, regardless of national origins, will actually improve with age.

But what about that bottle of Cal Cab we just bought?  We want to hold it until we think it will show its best.  Well, it's complicated.  Most cabernets are intended to be consumed within five years.  That is, most California wines feature the popular forward-fruit style with soft tannins and low acidity and therein lies the rub. 

Tannins are astringent compounds that come from grapes skins, pips, twigs and contact with the oak barrels the wine is aged in.  These compounds soften with time and new flavors develop from them.  Citric acid is a natural preservative and a higher acid wine aids the aging process.  The California climate is warmer than Europe and most other fine wine regions so grapes ripen faster leaving lower levels of acids than elsewhere.  Aging isn't needed for most of these easy drinking wines.

So how long should I hold this wine I just bought?  The prevailing wisdom is no more than ten years.  If it's a great cab from an acclaimed producer and made in the old world style, up to twenty years.  And that's if the wine is laying down in a dark, temperature-controlled, humidity-regulated, vibration-free environment.