What makes a wine ageworthy?

There are lots of questions about wine that get asked at scores of wine shops, probably every day, all over the world, but this is a question that is maybe just a BIT too general to get asked in most customer/salesperson encounters. The question, as the title says, is: “What makes a wine ageable”? And thankfully, with all of the seemingly impossibly difficult things in this life, the factors that make a wine ageable are few, clear, and basically immutable. Just for the sake of clarity, I’m not talking about outside-of-the-bottle factors like storage conditions, but rather wholly inside-the-bottle “structural” traits possesesd by the wines themselves. And away we go!

1. ALCOHOL LEVEL Alcohol is not used as a topical disinfectant for nothing. It not only is anti-microbial, it is also a natural preservative - this is why you can keep soused plums or currants for months. Higher alcohol wines tend to hold their respective “top forms”, all things being equal, longer than those with lower alcohol levels.

2. TANNINS As I said in my piece about tannins, these still not fully understood compounds also have a preservative effect, especially with regard to oxidation. And since the fading of color in a wine is directly related to oxidation (as an aside, and perhaps a bit strangely, white wines get darker as they oxidize, and red wines get lighter - go figure!) highly tannic wines tend to retain a more youthful color for longer stints of time.

3. ACIDS Acidity plays a very similar role that tannins do in slowing the aging process of a wine. Acidity is, for example, what allows a drink like Champagne to age so gracefully - Champagne is not particularly high in alcohol (usually about 12% give or take a point), has almost NO tannins to speak of (there are some present in Rose` Champagnes that derive their tannins from the short juice/skin contact time with the Pinot Noir) but Champagne is ACIDIC AS HELL which goes a long way in helping to keep Champagne fresh.

4. SUGAR Yup, good old fructose. What, along with salt, do you use to preserve salmon to make gravlax? Sugar! Have you ever had to throw away a rotten bowl of sugar? What about honey? (yes, it does crystallize, but re-introducing a little bit of water, and a short run under a hot tap, and you’re good to go). Clearly the answer to both of these questions is ‘no’ and the reason is that sugar is one of the world’s most powerful, non-toxic natural preservatives.

So let’s look at a few examples…Why do the following wines age well?

- German Eiswein - No tannins at all, and actually fair LOW levels of alcohol, but eisweins possess SUGAR and ACIDS out the wazoo!

- Big California Cabernets - These wines are not sweet, and in most cases are not particularly acidic either, but those who know Cali Cabs know that a paucity of TANNINS and ALCOHOL in these wines is rarely a problem.

- Port - Now we’re cookin’ with gas. Acidic port? no, not much of that to be found, but their ALCOHOL levels hover around 20%, they are quite to very SWEET, and those of you that have tasted a just bottled port know how massively TANNIC these wines can be. And with three of the four factors in the house, one might make an inference that port would be ESPECIALLY long-lived, and you know what?…one would be right…

- Madeira - This is a bit of a trick question…Well, kind of…Madeira, like port, has high ALCOHOL, and is, unlike port, extremely ACIDIC, but Madeira is made in an intentionally oxidative style, and unwanted oxidation is probably the main enemy of longevity in a wine, but if your taking oxidation to the limit in the very production process, it’s basically a ironclad innoculation against any further oxidation. For these reasons, Madeira is the unchallenged KING of longevity. At least in THEORY, Madeira is indestructable. I’ve actually drunk one from the 1856 vintage (this is not a typo!), and it was still very well structured, and certainly in no danger of fading any time soon.

So that’s it. There might be some minor peculiarities in certain wines that change things one way or the other, but these four fundamental features account for well better than 90% of the ageability factor in a wine. And since we’re talking about ageing wines, remember these rules to maximize your drinking “windows:

- Cool temperatures. 56 degrees Fahrenheit is ideal.

- Moderate Humidity. 70% is ideal. Too much humidity risks mold growth on corks and labels, and too little risks cork shrinkage as they slowly dry out.

- Darkness. Light, like heat, speeds up the natural reactions in a bottle of wine. The darker the better.

- Lack of vibration. Same as above…just like stirring your cup of coffee encourages the sugar in your cup to melt faster, agitating a bottle of wine causes accelerated chemical reactions in bottle. Tempting as it might be, do not clamp bottles of wine into a paint shaker.

- Store bottles horizontally. The one aging advisement that almost everyone knows. Storing wine in this manner keeps the cork moist, and therefore more supple and less likely to shrink and allow air to pass into the bottle. The ONE exception to this rule is our friend from above, Madeira. Madeira is so acidic, and so long lived, that over decades, the acidity in the wine can actually weaken the cork’s structure causing failure and perhaps big puddles of Madeira in your storage area.

TOM CIOCCO