Flavor World

Old wine doesn’t mean it’s good

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“So-and-so is like wine: the more time passes, the better it gets”. The woman looking for a good match should run away from the candidate who has this profile. It is not new that this famous phrase has been used mistakenly in an attempt to praise someone. Ledo mistake. The vast majority of wines (about 95% of them, say some experts) should be taken as soon as possible after being purchased.

Very few of them improve over time. The so-called “guard wines” are rarities, produced by specialists, in a combination of grapes, terrain, climate and amount of rain, among other factors, positively exceptional.

This idea of ​​”the older, the better” may even work with most whiskeys, but with wine it is different. The wine must be tasted at its peak, that is, at the best time after its manufacturing process is completed. Currently, the vast majority of wines available on the market (those that we, mortal relatives, consume) are produced to be immediately consumed, after leaving the bodegas and reaching the shelves of markets and emporiums.

The aging period for these wines is still at the winery, which only releases it when it is ready.

But you may be asking: what about those wines that a lot of people keep at home and make the biggest ceremony of opening? Of the two, one: either the person does not know anything about wine and is uselessly storing the drink or really has a rarity.

In the first hypothesis, the stored wine, even under ideal conditions of temperature and humidity, is on a downward development curve. To realize this, it is necessary to pay attention to the color, aroma and, of course, the taste of wine.

The red wine that “loses strength” has a vinegary aroma (it is often noticed when you smell the cork), the color tends more to brown than red and the taste is thin, sour or even bad.

Past white wine tends to have an acetone odor, the color (originally light yellow or greenish) darker and the taste of vinegar or old nuts. In sparkling wines, a clear sign of deterioration is the reduction, or even existence, of bubbling.

In the second hypothesis, when the person has a rarity, it is a wine designed by the winemaker to finalize its maturation process in the bottle – they are called “guard wines”. We are talking about big labels from Bordeaux and Burgundy (France) or Piedmont and Tuscany (Italy), for example.

The first sign that it is a great wine is the cost. The high quality of the grapes, the terroir and the “know-how”, of course, has its price. But, attention! Expensive wine does not necessarily mean quality. There’s a lot of cat being sold as a chinchilla!