Ask anyone about wine and you’ll hear the same thing over and over. Wine should be aged. The longer it sits in a cellar, the better it will be when you finally uncork it. As with many consensus statements, this one isn’t really true.
The aging issue with wine is overstated. The first thing to understand is nearly half the wines produced in the world should not be aged. Specifically, white wines are usually not intended to be stuck in a cellar somewhere. They just go bad, although there are a few exceptions. Red wines, on the other hand, are more agreeable to aging. That being said, not even all reds should be aged.
So, is there a list of wines that should be aged and those that should not? Well, there are a huge number of wines, so any list will be woefully incomplete. Still, let’s have a stab at it. Wines that age well include:
* Red Bordeaux * Cabernet Sauvignon * Port Wines * Rieslings from Germany * Certain Reserve Chiantis from Tuscany
Of this group, the Bordeaux wines are by far the best wines to age. These are often considered celebration wines. In Europe, it wasn’t that long ago that a proud papa would buy a Bordeaux red when his child was born and store it in the cellar to celebrate that child’s 21st birthday or some other momentous event.
It should be noted that there is a general misconception about storing wine. People tend to view it as a situation where one is storing wine for 20 years or what have you. While this is a good move, you should also be storing wine you might need if someone pops by at the spur of the moment. The specific wines depend on your personal taste, but having a red and white chilled is always a good move. Just make sure you keep track of how long the white is sitting there!
Storing wine has become a major fad for wine aficionados. You can buy stand alone storage units for a hundreds or many thousands of dollars. The question is whether this is really a good move. Only you, of course, can answer that!
Thomas Ajava writes for – where you can buy wine journals that make great for friends and family as well as wine tasting parties and trips.
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