Wine Thread

[LTig]

Lmao I don't know if I have it in me to wait.

How to be patient and inpatient at the same time:

1. always buy twice as much bottles as you need
2. drink one half of the bottles now and store the other half in your cellar.
3. if years < 15 goto 1
4. buy only as much bottles you need, store them in your cellar and take the oldest bottles out for drinking
5. goto 4

 

[pozz]

This how I learned to become patient: Buy 2 cases (12 bottles), wait 3 years and then open 1 bottle each following year. When the last bottle is open you wished you had not opened all the others before.

This I could do. Appeals to my systematic side.

 

[onofno]

@onofno Could you recommend a few nice French reds?

I would like to help you but I drink the same wines everyday for years and I don't drink a lot. It takes around 3 or 4 days before I open another bottle.
SO I drink a wine called LAFAGE Léa : 18€ (Léa is the daughter of Jean-Marc LAFAGE, the winemaker)
and sometimes I change and I drink a LAFAGE Nicolas.
I know the people who own the vineyards for 40 years at least and yes they export to the USA. I don't buy their wines from a reseller I buy direct at their immense and beautiful property located at 3km from the 1000 years old village called Canet-en-Roussillon and 5km from the Mediterranean Sea. I have a second home in Canet.

https://www.domaine-lafage.com/en/red.html in english

touch a bottle you'll get information... read the HOME page.

 

[SIY]

How to be patient and inpatient at the same time:

1. always buy twice as much bottles as you need
2. drink one half of the bottles now and store the other half in your cellar.
3. if years < 15 goto 1
4. buy only as much bottles you need, store them in your cellar and take the oldest bottles out for drinking
5. goto 4

Dirty secret: the vast majority of wines don't really age well. Nor are they intended to. Although we have a decent cellar full of aged Rhones, Piemontese, Loires, and grower Champagne, most of our daily drinking is things like Barberas, Beaujolais, Jura, New York hybrids, and the like. To put it in perspective, Gallo makes more Cabernet and Merlot in a day than all of the classed-growth Bordeaux put together make in a year.

 

[KozmoNaut]

How to be patient and inpatient at the same time:

1. always buy twice as much bottles as you need
2. drink one half of the bottles now and store the other half in your cellar.
3. if years < 15 goto 1
4. buy only as much bottles you need, store them in your cellar and take the oldest bottles out for drinking
5. goto 4

I prefer

1. Buy wine
2. Drink wine
3. Repeat

 

[SIY]

I prefer

1. Buy wine
2. Drink wine
3. Repeat

Back in the days when I was in that business, the consensus from every winemaker and grower I knew was, "99% of wine is aged long enough to drive it home from the grocery store."

 

[DDF]

Back in the days when I was in that business, the consensus from every winemaker and grower I knew was, "99% of wine is aged long enough to drive it home from the grocery store."

It used to be relatively easy in the early 90s to buy wines that significantly improved with age. Nowadays, you typically have to spend more than ~ $50 (Can) a bottle for the 'privilege' of waiting 10 years for a bottle to be its best. Wineries shifted their mid to everyday priced wine largely an to instant consumption style. I've seen this buying many of the the same wines from 1990 to now and cellaring.

Its too bad because you can't get the same style from a young wine as an old wine meant for ageing. Commercially, it makes perfect sense though.

 

[Soniclife]

How do you do controlled tasting with old Vs new? Are reports of huge improvement after ten years not just uncontrolled sighted tests?

 

[SIY]

How do you do controlled tasting with old Vs new? Are reports of huge improvement after ten years not just uncontrolled sighted tests?

Sort of. But the differences in things like phenolic index and color are trivial to measure, and there’s a lot of literature on the verified chemistry of aging. “Better” is of course not a measurable.

There’s an old joke that the French drink their wine too young because they’re afraid that a socialist government will take them away. The British drink their wine too old because they love dust and cobwebs on their bottles. The Americans drink them at the right age because they don’t know any better.

Good inexpensive ageable wines are out there. Cru Beaujolais and Loire reds come to mind.

 

[Soniclife]

Sort of. But the differences in things like phenolic index and color are trivial to measure, and there’s a lot of literature on the verified chemistry of aging. “Better” is of course not a measurable.

So just like loudspeakers then .

I'd be interested in how many untrained people can really tell when blinded, it's not something I know about, but the process of the testing is interesting.

 

[onofno]

Sort of. But the differences in things like phenolic index and color are trivial to measure, and there’s a lot of literature on the verified chemistry of aging. “Better” is of course not a measurable.

There’s an old joke that the French drink their wine too young because they’re afraid that a socialist government will take them away. The British drink their wine too old because they love dust and cobwebs on their bottles. The Americans drink them at the right age because they don’t know any better.

Good inexpensive ageable wines are out there. Cru Beaujolais and Loire reds come to mind.

Since I was born I've seen in France socialists governments and non socialists governments, they are the same, they lie to us, the people.
I hate Europe I mean ... the concept. This europe is designed to further enrich the rich people.

Democracy : system of government in which the people exercise sovereignty, power.
There are few democraties : Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Netherlands, Danemark and New-Zealand.

 

[Wes]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-82306-0

 

[MediumRare]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-82306-0

Very cool. Science wins again.

 

[Ilkless]

clueless as to where to start with wine compared to whisky, but thought here'd be as good a place to ask as any other. While I was on holiday in Italy (Naples) last year I had an interesting Italian red wine that I really liked at an enoteca. Foolishly forgot to take a photo of the label so all I can literally go by is my memory of how it was on the palate. If I were to go out on a limb I think it was from somewhere Lombardy, but don't quote me there. It had this interesting tannic quality I really liked. The tannins gave the wine this velvety weight and texture in the mouth (literally felt like soft fabric brushing along my tongue), without being astringent at all. It also didn't strike me as a particularly dry or flinty/mineral wine too.

What wines could I look out for to get a similar tannic quality?

 

[ahofer]

clueless as to where to start with wine compared to whisky, but thought here'd be as good a place to ask as any other. While I was on holiday in Italy (Naples) last year I had an interesting Italian red wine that I really liked at an enoteca. Foolishly forgot to take a photo of the label so all I can literally go by is my memory of how it was on the palate. If I were to go out on a limb I think it was from somewhere Lombardy, but don't quote me there. It had this interesting tannic quality I really liked. The tannins gave the wine this velvety weight and texture in the mouth (literally felt like soft fabric brushing along my tongue), without being astringent at all. It also didn't strike me as a particularly dry or flinty/mineral wine too.

What wines could I look out for to get a similar tannic quality?

From your description I would recommend wines made from Nebbiolo, like a Barolo, but many varietals can have strong tannins and a smooth, textured mouth feel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebbiolo

 

[Plan9]

I prefer this Bottle Shock - love it.

Fun movie!

 

[Wes]

clueless as to where to start with wine compared to whisky, but thought here'd be as good a place to ask as any other. While I was on holiday in Italy (Naples) last year I had an interesting Italian red wine that I really liked at an enoteca. Foolishly forgot to take a photo of the label so all I can literally go by is my memory of how it was on the palate. If I were to go out on a limb I think it was from somewhere Lombardy, but don't quote me there. It had this interesting tannic quality I really liked. The tannins gave the wine this velvety weight and texture in the mouth (literally felt like soft fabric brushing along my tongue), without being astringent at all. It also didn't strike me as a particularly dry or flinty/mineral wine too.

What wines could I look out for to get a similar tannic quality?

I suggest exploring Chianti, then Brunello di Montalcino

for another axis of interest, try Barbaresco, then Brunello

Matt Kramer has an xlnt small book on Italian Wines, "Making Sense of Italian Wine"

a good wine shop is worth it and many will restart tastings in store and classes soon; if none near you try Kermit-Lynch in Berkeley, they have a good newsletter (not as good as his dad put out) and will ship to you

BUT, but... wines need a few years to be really at their best (or even drinkable) - Luckily, the Italians will not release a wine right away so that helps

 

[MediumRare]

I suggest exploring Chianti, then Brunello di Montalcino

for another axis of interest, try Barbaresco, then Brunello

Matt Kramer has an xlnt small book on Italian Wines, "Making Sense of Italian Wine"

a good wine shop is worth it and many will restart tastings in store and classes soon; if none near you try Kermit-Lynch in Berkeley, they have a good newsletter (not as good as his dad put out) and will ship to you

BUT, but... wines need a few years to be really at their best (or even drinkable) - Luckily, the Italians will not release a wine right away so that helps

I endorse Wes’s recommendations. One comment: today, winemakers determine the ageing needed for their wines. Many wines, even reds, are intended for drinking shortly after bottling in the spring after harvest. Beaujolais Nouveau is famously drunk within weeks of picking. It is true many Italian reds, such as Nebbiolo, are renowned for their hard tannins that require more than a few years of age to be enjoyable. But the general trend globally is for earlier maturity. One of the saddest days for a wine-lover is to open a bottle that supposedly benefited from aging only to find it past its peak, or worse, spoiled.

 

[Pennyless Audiophile]

I suggest you to try also some other wines from the same region (Tuscany):

• Presence of standard classification badges (for italian wines: DOC, DOCG and IGT)

See here for an explanation, https://www.thespruceeats.com/do-doc-docg-igt-and-vdt-on-italian-wine-labels-3957707

Other suggestions, Barolo & Nebiolo from Pidmont.

 

[MediumRare]

How do you do controlled tasting with old Vs new? Are reports of huge improvement after ten years not just uncontrolled sighted tests?

Generally it’s very easy to recognize how a particular wine is aging, starting with appearance, but also organoleptically. If you put a series of the same wine in a "flight" (a glass of each vintage in a row) you probably could roughly sort them in order by tasting them. Winemakers and wine writers do "vertical" tastings like this all the time. Trained winemakers are basically chemists, so the changes that occur are all easily measurable in a lab as well. But "better" and "improvement" are very subjective terms. Preference can be measured and clusters of style-preferences can be (and are regularly) measured as well.