When a wine is ready to drink?

Actually, the answer to this question is very simple: If it tastes!

For me there is nothing more exciting than a wine that I bought 12 bottles for example, to "watch" over several years, ie to open a bottle every now and again to try and experience the growing maturity of the wine.

But not every one has several bottles of wine. Many feel it is a shame, a wine "too early" to open and thus to deprive of pleasure, to drink to "the right moment."

But when is this "right time"? It depends heavily on its own once taste. Many wine drinkers may be young, primarily fruity wines that are still wild on the palate, the tongue is furred, and where the acid is still clearly felt. Others love the ripe wine with a complex nose, balanced smooth taste. Since everyone has to make his own experiences, and form his own taste. And - you must develop a sense of whether a wine tastes, not because he is too young (or too old), or whether it is simply a bad or even wine is faulty.

Development of a wine with more mature

A young wine is young and impetuous. The individual components (acid, tannins, possibly wood notes) are still "together", each component is to present and identifiable. The acid (who do not know how to acid taste, sometimes go to the pharmacy and buy vitamin C powder and dissolve it in water at different doses - a very healthy test) can be intrusive and annoying. This also applies to the tannin. Everyone knows that furry feeling on the tongue, which is produced by young red wines. This is the tannin (tannin). In addition, a young wine has a distinct, tangy fruit as possible. This is called the primary fruit. This reminds me of a young fruity wines are most likely to fresh fruit (or vegetables or other plants), then the fruit is more subtle and comes out not so clear.

Eventually, a wine starts to lose its Primärfruchtigkeit. It is often said to be closed to start the wine. It means that the wine is really unattractive. On the one hand, hardly noticeable fruit, but still significant, and not necessarily pleasant tannins and acidity. At this stage makes a wine not fun.

If he then re-opens, it will be exciting. The nose develops complex, very rich flavors. The fruit comes again. But not as clear and distinct but integrated in many different flavors that were not even imagine the young wine. The color is golden yellow (for white wine) or red-brown (with red wine), to detect the earliest at the glass edge. On the palate, acidity and tannins to the wine have "married". The wine is round and elegant - just more mature.

This phase lasts as long. With increasing maturity, the wine is brown, the nose creates a peculiar one-dimensional Alterston. The fruit from expanding, is hardly felt. Eventually the wine by the glass breaks. The ingredients are dissolved, the wine is cloudy and the components fall to the ground. Now makes the wine no longer fun: when disposing is in order.

I want to stress that I describe here, of course, an ideal aging process, which is to be found in this form only for high-quality wines. A wine made from the beginning, no acid, no tannins, has no structure, never grow old. Most wines in the world want to be drunk in the first year after bottling!

See also the glossary at the bottle before

Maturity tables

If I need an indication of the optimum drinking time, I use very much the "Little Johnson", who are for the different production areas with approximate information tables at hand.

A little trick

There is a possibility, a possible idea of ​​the remaining potential in a wine with a little test to receive. Get the wine contact with air, then you take what are essentially a part of the future in advance of the bottle. If a wine after a day in the open bottle (or even in the decanter) is still OK, or even better yet, you can usually also assume that he still in the bottle has a long future ahead of him.

Someone dies (especially older) wine almost already visible within one to two hours in the glass, then he surely has no future.

Utz Graafmann