Color Is First Clue to Overaging

The anticipation was palpable. The announced wine was a 1979 white Burgundy of grand reputation and breeding, and the assembled guests, all wine lovers of world renown, were eager to sip this elixir.

As the wine was being poured into cut crystal glasses, there was a first sign of potential disaster: It was bronze in color, without a trace of the bright yellow of youth. And then came the crashing reality: the wine was shot, a product of at least two enemies, time and poor storage conditions. The aroma revealed no fruit at all; it was dominated by cardboard-y oxidation.

“Ah, the English cuvee,” said one of the diners, obviously trying to excuse this wretched example of overaged wine. (Faced with bottles of wine that disappoint, many wine lovers can be amazingly forgiving, and find the most wonderful euphemisms to chat about a glass of oafish, clumsy wine.)

Calling a wine English cuvee isn’t derogatory; it’s just a fact of life: British wine lovers seem to relish white wines, such as this ’79 white Burgundy, that have an oxidized character. These are burnished wines that lack the fruit character that once they had in their youth.

Gaining an appreciation of such a tired characteristic is not something I care to do. Nor have I tried. As a product of a fruit, wine should offer some of that fruit character in its aroma and taste--it’s one of the things I drink wine for--and when the fruit is completely subdued by processing, or when that fruit has taken flight because the wine is too old, I find it hard to appreciate.

Too many people revere old wine merely because it is old. They lose sight of the fact that a wine aged too long is like one of life’s grand opportunities left until it is too late to enjoy it. Aging wine for the sake of aging is silly. All it does is give you an old wine.

The purpose of aging any wine is to improve it, and if the wine has wonderful qualities when it is young, why not drink it? And monitor it for its ability to age further.

I have tasted a lot of wine that looked like that above-mentioned White Burgundy. Mostly, such wines are more than tired; they are dead as Kelsey’s nutmeg. And the process that got it to that point is almost always a combination of aging the wine too long and aging it in intemperate conditions, where temperatures rise and fall, and where light hits the bottles.

We have all heard the phrase “Like rare old wine,” and variations on that theme, suggesting that mere age makes it better. The fact is that most of the wine in this world is made to be consumed young and only a tiny fraction of it, almost all of it red wine, is made to be aged.

And most of the Chardonnays made in this world won’t last a decade, yet I see people who are otherwise quite rational buying Chardonnays and stashing them away without ever having tasted them. They assume (or have heard) that a particular Chardonnay or white Burgundy has all the stuff to age well, so into the cellar it goes, never to be touched, waiting for that magical date when the wine will suddenly, instantly, become great.

This reminds me of a story told to me in 1963 by John J. Espey, now a professor emeritus of English at UCLA. Espey, lecturing on William Wordsworth, told his class in English Literature that when he was a student, he had a college professor at Occidental College, Benjamin F. Stelter, who had told him that he wouldn’t truly understand Wordsworth until he was 50.

At the time, said Espey, he was 49. And he said that on the evening before his 50th birthday he intended to leave a copy of the works of Wordsworth open on his nightstand so when he awakened the next morning, all would become clear.

Wine doesn’t reach a peak instantly; it takes time, often years. During that time there are gradual changes in the product. And as with people, what you liked in youth you lose over time -- but you gain new elements that weren’t there earlier. It’s a constant trade-off, and when the wine has little left to trade, all that happens is that it deteriorates rapidly.

White wine goes through this cycle much faster than red wine, and some white wines simply don’t age at all. This goes for most Chenin Blancs, most Sauvignon Blancs, most Rieslings, and even many Chardonnays. And those Chardonnays that do age for a few years are generally not those that are particularly appealing when they are young.

The classic example of a Chardonnay that does age is from the tiny Stony Hill Vineyard in the Napa Valley, founded by the late Fred McRae and his wife, Eleanor, in 1953. Stony Hill makes only white wines, and the one it’s most famous for is Chardonnay.

Production is extremely limited and the wine is sold almost exclusively by mailing list to longtime, loyal customers.

And it’s a good thing too, because when Stony Hill Chardonnays are first released, they usually disappoint first-time tasters who have heard of this wine’s greatness. They sip and usually are mystified because of the lean, delicate nature of the fruit and the rather simple, straightforward aftertaste.

Yet as the Stony Hill Chardonnays age, they take on a richness and an almost hazelnut bouquet to go with a delicate creaminess. This is wine that is quite unlike the artificial buttery quality that creeps into some of the more heavy-handed styles of Chardonnay.

To see what happens when Stony Hill wines age, Dr. Haskell Norman, president of the northern California chapter of the International Wine and Food Society, staged a series of dinner events last year featuring all of the Stony Hill Chardonnays dating from 1962. The wines all came from perfect storage conditions and showed amazing depth and richness, though with none of the overt “fatness” sometimes associated with older white wines. And they went with the food.

That is because the Stony Hill wines were made to age, protected from procedures that would push them prematurely into a downward slide.

The tip-off that the wines were in good shape was their color. Norman, a veteran of tastings of older wines, was surprised and pleased that the colors of even the oldest wines were still bright yellow--some even had a hint of green--and there were only a couple with even the barest hint of golden hue. None of the wines displayed the bronze of the ’79 mentioned above.

The aromas of the 1962 and 1964 wines in particular were vibrantly fresh and the tastes quite complex, though neither was as full-bodied as one might get from a 3-year-old wine made differently. And with the food, the wines all worked brilliantly to accent the flavors, not dominate them.

It’s not easy to know how a wine will age, but color is a strong indicator of its likelihood. Chardonnays that are dark golden when they are released often are already on a downward slide, and if they age for three to five years from the vintage, that’s considered good. Those that display that bronze tone I see often in some wines are probably those that won’t age at all.

Also, the aroma of a wine is a clue. If it is heavily laden with oak, vanillins, butterscotch tones and all manner of roasted, toasted elements and reminds you faintly of Sherry, there is little chance the wine will make it a decade. Lean, hard, steely, delicately fruity wines (such as those you see from a great vintage in Chablis) will need some time before they become approachable.

The Chardonnays of Grgich, Trefethen, Chappellet, Freemark Abbey, Sterling, and Cain all are made with an eye toward expanding in the bottle. So are many other wines, but you have to select carefully. Not every winery maintains a house style so carefully.

But getting a wine to age for a decade or more requires much patience, keeping your hands off the merchandise while it improves. And then who is to say the wine is actually better?

Are these more delicate wines drinkable when they are released? Absolutely, but they taste better with a few years of time to rest and grow.

For example, I like the delicacy of Grgich Chardonnays, but within the last three weeks I have had a chance to taste, blind, both the 1977 and 1980 Grgich Chardonnays. The servers of these wines asked me the same question: guess the vintage. In both cases, I guessed 1984 because both wines were so youthful.

Acquiring the ability to detect the subtle changes in Chardonnay, gaining the ability to sense and appreciate the bouquet of time, is a skill not easily or quickly done. But it’s not difficult. All it takes is a budget for a case of wine that will age, such as a 1986 from any of the producers mentioned above.

The idea is simple. Put the case into good storage conditions (cool, constant temperature) and take a bottle out of the case. Taste it and make careful notes on its color, aroma, and taste on a 3x5 index card. Date the card and place it in the box where the bottle was.

Now, get out next year’s calendar and move ahead six months. Schedule your next tasting of the wine for that date. By the time you get finished with the case of 12 bottles, six more years will have elapsed and you’ll have 12 index cards with a running history of that wine, showing what age will do. And the last bottle will be nearly 10 years old.

I got in touch with John Espey the other day, to ask permission to retell the 27-year-old story, and he assented.

Espey is 77 now, retired 17 years from full-time teaching, and he retains his marvelous wit and recalls the story of Wordsworth and the promise that he would understand it at age 50. And then he told me that Stelter was wrong:

“It doesn’t work. I still struggle with Wordsworth.”