Wine that gets better with age

In today’s society, there is an unrelenting quest for the most up-to-date version of tech; if your phone is any more than a “generation” old, in certain quarters, you’ll be marked as either a cheapskate or a geriatric for not updating. Antiquated, decrepit and prehistoric – things that have been in existence for an extended time are regularly so negatively described; often, the piece of kit attracting this sort of criticism may not even be twelve months old!

The most modern concept of “planned obsolescence”, where businesses will build the product to be irreparable after a certain period, appals me; toasters should last more than two years before they break down!

Thankfully in the world of wine, age is often revered, and it is a very regular occurrence for clients. I have to seek my advice about the bottles or cases (usually of Port or Claret) they were given when they were young and have been cradling and nurturing for many years.

As soon as the fermented grape juice is bottled, it begins to break down. A complex set of reactions occurs amongst the phenols and polyphenols, the several hundred naturally occurring chemicals that affect the taste, colour, and mouthfeel of wine. As these compounds deteriorate, they create a different set of smells, flavours and hues, and this we term maturity.

Unfortunately, just because it is old does not mean it is good or worth anything; many modern wines are explicitly created to be drunk young, fresh and full of youthful exuberance; these would be seriously awful if you kept them for any great length of time. Only on rare occasions, when the environment that creates these phenolic compounds is perfect, will you get wines that are suitable for cellaring for years, and the value of your initial investment will be appreciated.

A “safer” bet to taste wine with age as a major influence would be to seek out those made from vines that have survived for thirty or more years on this planet. Almost every vine plant has roughly twenty-five to thirty years of commercial viability. As it comes to the end of its life, it loses its vigour, producing fewer and fewer bunches each vintage.

Old vines, or as the French more romantically term them, “Vieilles Vignes”, are just like your nonagenarian granny, exceptional beings that outlive their original cohort and not everyone can be one. 

The remarkable aspect to note about these relatively ancient assets is that although they produce fewer bunches (typically half of that they would have produced in their youth), they give a higher level of concentration, complexity and flavour to the fruit they do generate. This, in turn, manifests itself in the wine, producing wines of character and depth.

These gnarly old codgers need to be well looked after, so old vine wines tend to attract a more sensitive and considerate winemaker who will make good the high quality but low volume crops they are given – it’s not a ‘cast iron’ mark of quality. Still, I would say that it is a really good bet that they’ll be a very tasty drop!

A selection of some tasty old vine wines:

Carignan ‘Vieilles Vignes’ Alain Grignon – £6.99 from Majestic Wine

Birichino ‘Besson Vineyard’ Old Vine Grenache 2018, California – £21.99 from Majestic Wine