![\"Wine](\"https:\/\/www.winery-sage.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/old-and-old.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>Aged Wine In A Wine Cellar<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n
Some things get better with age and some don’t.\u00a0 Classic paintings – check.\u00a0 Fossils – yep.\u00a0 My wife – you bet (and I didn’t just put that in because I need to sleep some time and she knows where all the sharp knives are kept in the kitchen).\u00a0 Cottage cheese – not so much.\u00a0 Spoiled children – are you kidding me?\u00a0 I’ve been next to too many on airline flights.\u00a0 How about wine?\u00a0 Well…that isn’t a simple answer.<\/p>\n
So how long should wine age?\u00a0 It’s one of the most frequently asked questions about wine.\u00a0 Every Varietal has different needs when it comes to aging.\u00a0 Some like Beaujolais Nouveau should be enjoyed within months of harvest.\u00a0 Others like the most robust Cabernet Sauvignons can lay down for decades and continue to improve.\u00a0 Generally what allows a wine to age gracefully and improve are the combinations of tannins and acids.\u00a0 Wine with both, will generally improve with age.\u00a0 Wines with little of either, should almost always be consumed soon after release.<\/p>\n
Most retail wine produced and sold in California is designed to be drunk directly off the shelf.\u00a0 By the way…random thought…anyone notice that one of the correct past tenses “drink” is “drunk” even though most people don’t use it that way.\u00a0 Come on people…it’s a natural…everyone embrace the “drunk”.\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah…I know I digress…we return you back to your regularly scheduled blog post<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 However, many wineries produce vintages that have the characteristics to be \u201ccellared” so they will improve with age. Aging a wine that wasn\u2019t designed to be aged works about as well as trying to age mayonnaise on a hot summer day. Drinking a wine too early, that was designed to be aged, is a waste of your investment because age-worthy wines are usually more expensive and don’t come into their own for a number of years.\u00a0 Lesson number one – age wines that are meant to be aged and drink wines that were made to enjoyed right away.\u00a0 So, assuming you’ve realized that you have a wine worthy of aging, it’s key to age it in the right conditions.<\/p>\n Temperature<\/strong> Pressure<\/strong> Light<\/strong> Type of Wine<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some things get better with age and some don’t.\u00a0 Classic paintings – check.\u00a0 Fossils – yep.\u00a0 My wife – you bet (and I didn’t just put that in because I need to sleep some time and she knows where all the sharp knives are kept in the kitchen).\u00a0 Cottage cheese – not so much.\u00a0 Spoiled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,311],"tags":[437,442,438,439,441,440],"class_list":["post-2677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-wine-educations","tag-agin-wine","tag-aging-varietals","tag-cellaring-wine","tag-correct-wine-storage-temperature","tag-light-and-wine","tag-pressure-and-wine"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3rltY-Hb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winery-sage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winery-sage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winery-sage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winery-sage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winery-sage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2677"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/www.winery-sage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2710,"href":"https:\/\/www.winery-sage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2677\/revisions\/2710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winery-sage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winery-sage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winery-sage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/span>When storing wine, the ideal temperature range is 57 – 60 degrees.\u00a0 This reflects the normal cellar\/basement temperature where wines were traditionally stored in wineries and homes.\u00a0 If that’s not available, find a place in your home where the temperature stays as consistent as possible;\u00a0 often a basement, back room or even a crawlspace.\u00a0 Wine that was designed to be laid down can age gracefully even at 68 degrees as long as the temperature remains consistent.\u00a0 It likely they won\u2019t improve the way it would have at a lower temperature, but for a casual wine drinker, the differences shouldn\u2019t be too great as long as it\u2019s enjoyed on the younger side of mature, rather than waiting for it to reach full maturity as it would have at cellar temperature.\u00a0 Temperature stability is much more important than lower temperatures.<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>If there is a yin and yang of wine storage, it is temperature and pressure.\u00a0 Large temperature swings create pressure differences between the air in the bottle and the outside air.\u00a0 As the temperature outside cools below the temperature of the bottle, the warmer air in the bottle is at a higher pressure and will try to force its way out of the bottle.\u00a0 As the wine storage temperature warms beyond the temperature of the bottle, it usually has a higher pressure which pushes air back into the bottle.\u00a0 Even well sealed bottles are subject to this movement and after several years, the daily intake and outflow of air will begin to oxidize the wine.<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>It is critical to avoid any strong sources of light.\u00a0 Any source of light is harmful to wine whether it be sunlight, incandescent, fluorescent or LED.\u00a0 Sunlight is the worst though, because it shines in so many spectrums.\u00a0 Light of any kind reacts adversely with the phenolic compounds in the wine and degrades it.\u00a0 The stronger the light, the worse the reaction. \u00a0You can tell if wine has been subjected to light damage because it will have a slightly skunky smell, mildly reminiscent of a teenager’s sweat socks that have been percolating in a gym bag, next to a dead skunk in the neighborhood of an overflowing septic tank on a hot summer day.<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>The most important of all factors is the wine itself.\u00a0 Some Varietals are age-worthy and some are not.\u00a0 Cabernet Sauvignons age well but only if they were meant to be aged.\u00a0 Dolcetto should be drunk within a couple of years of its vintage.\u00a0 Refer to the individual Varietal pages on our reference site<\/a> to get hints on how long a wine can be stored after purchase.\u00a0 If you have the opportunity, consult with the winemaker, who always has the best idea of how the wine will improve with age.\u00a0 And most important, don’t by a cheap-ass bottle of Cabernet from the store and sit on it for years with the expectation that it will improve.\u00a0 You’ll end up with really bad vinegar, not really good wine.<\/p>\nWinery-Sage is an online Winery Encyclopedia designed to help you compare wines, wineries, and regions by using a unique database. Cross-reference varietals and the wineries that produce them, as well as discover events sponsored by wineries and associations. We\u2019re not here to sell you anything or pass you off to paid advertisers, just share the love for wine. Discover California wines at\u00a0<\/span>Winery-Sage.com<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n