Oxidation and Aging

It's very important to understand the role oxygen plays in creating the smooth taste. Most wines out of the barrel are fairly harsh. They interact with oxygen over time, getting more and more rich and flavorful. Each new oxygen molecule adds to the richness and taste complexity, building smoothness as it goes. At some point, the oxygenated wine hits its peak flavor (this may be different for different people with different tastes but generally falls in a range most people agree on). After that, more oxygen takes away flavor and takes the flavor in the direction of flat and lifeless.

Take a Zinfandel that's two years old. It's probably safe to say that this wine has not yet reached its peak. It may take ten years to reach its peak and another ten to go flat. Open the bottle and the oxygen rushes in, speeding up the process significantly. It may take an hour to peak and two hours to go flat. Or it may take three hours to peak and six hours to go flat. It may depend on the shape of the decanter or the glass and whether you turn the wine in the glass or not, because that affects how many oxygen molecules have a chance to interact with the wine. The general goal is to drink a wine at its peak, and that has mostly to do with how much exposure its had to oxygen.

Which brings me to the first principle of smooth wine: good things come to those who wait. If you open that bottle of two-year-old wine, you need to wait for the air to do its thing. If you rush it, you're just wasting your money. If you keep that same bottle in the cellar for ten years, it should come out of the bottle pretty much ready to drink. The younger the wine, the longer you need to wait. And it's better to let the wine age and accumulate oxygen slowly. You can compensate by letting it breathe, but you can't achieve the full body without several years (usually) of cellared aging.

Which is why collecting wine is such a pain in the ass. One hot day in July can ruin your entire collection. So if you don't have a temperature-controlled cellar, don't plan on storing your wine over the summer unless you live in Iceland. More on that soon.

For most wines I recommend, you want to get them into a nice big glass and swirl them hard. This is called turning the wine. Put a cloth down on a hard surface, pin the base of the glass to the cloth between your index and middle fingers, and swirl vigorously (without spilling). Do this often. For most of the wines I drink, I let them breathe in the glass for 15 to 45 minutes before drinking. Even more at higher altitudes.

Let your nose be your guide. Take a wine you really like, a wine you have a case of. Pour a glass and smell it at 15-minute intervals. Note how the smell goes from volatile and alcohol vapors to more fruit and berry flavors. Taste the wine after smelling, to see how it's changing. Notice that the taste builds nonlinearly. It may still be smelly after half an hour, even 45 minutes. But then at some point it will snap, and that could happen a couple of times as it ramps up toward full flavor and smoothness. It may be that after 75 minutes it's good and drinkable, but after 90 minutes it's very good and at 105 minutes it's spectacular. This is a great exercise to do with anything you have a case of, because once you learn on one bottle you'll know how to treat the rest. With a single bottle, you'll need patience and experience to catch it at the right time.

These days, winemakers have a lot of control over their processes, but the grapes still vary from year to year. Which is why the same wine from two different years can taste very different. Just because you let the wine from one year wait in the glass for 30 minutes doesn't mean the next year's batch will need the same treatment at the same point in its life. So you have to experiment with every wine, and that means going slowly.

In general, you have to play it by ear. You may be in a restaurant or you may have picked up a bottle for dinner. My suggestion is to keep turning the wine and let it breathe, sipping slowly as you go. You should get a good idea where it's going. In general, if a wine is less than five years old, wait longer than you think you should. If it starts to taste good, resist the urge to drink it! It will taste even better in 15-30 minutes. As a general rule, if you're drinking a cabernet that's under 6 years old, give it at least 30-45 minutes in the glass. Then keep an eye on how the taste is developing and drink more when you think you've found the peak.

After you've opened your bottle and poured what you want, you may have some left you want to save. To save wine, I recommend the Vacuvin Wine Saver, which is nothing more than a small pump and a set of rubber tops that keep a vacuum at the top of your bottle. Pump all the air out of the top and keep the bottle in a cool place - it will last for more than a week. If you're not drinking it, just re-pump every 3-4 days to keep it fresh. This way, a bottle can easily last two weeks.