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Old Wines, Old Jokes

The myth and the reality

    Here's a real world example of the problem, as I see it.  Take a classy wine from California's fruit-driven 1984 vintage. Delicious from the get-go!  Ripe and round,  chock full of flavor, approachable early on.  It made you go "wow." (If you're not as happy with that vintage.....well, there is always some similar hypothetical that would suit you, so play along and let's just assume you agree here. Don't "fight" the hypothetical.)  BUT fifteen years later it is a bit tired and although still drinking fairly well, it has lost some flavor and some charm. It has peaked, and perhaps is passing its peak.  No more "wow."  Call it the "hare."  Meanwhile, the tortoise, let's say a  more heralded 1985 cab from the same winery that was hard, charmless and tannic in its youth, is now coming around and drinking beautifully and seems to be approaching its peak.  At its peak the 1985 never gives us quite the rush of  pure pleasure and fun we got from the 1984.  Just speaking hypothetically, let us say that the 1984 at its peak gets a 95 rating. The 1985 at its peak gets a 90.   Yet the window of  truly great drinking for the 1984 was relatively small, maybe 1987--1995, while the 1985 keeps improving in the cellar.

    Which is better?   To me, hands down, no issue. The 1984.  It gave the maxium pleasure.  One school of thought would hold that it has to be the 1985 because it is more ageworthy.  This school of thought says that the ability to age for long periods in and of itself is a sign of a great wine.  This concept is defended by arguing that something special happens with age, and the more extreme the age, apparently, the better, if the wine survives.  With all of these propositions, I disagree.   I think old wine, especially extremely old wine,  is mostly a myth and an expensive joke played upon us by history.

    A wine deserves extra points, I think, for holding at peak and giving the drinker a longer window of drinkability.  That is a very useful trait. Certainly, I  would not want to pay big bucks for a first growth Bordeaux wine that falls apart in five years.  That's a convenience, though, not an earth shattering event.  The purpose of cellaring is to improve the wine. If all it does is hold, not irrelevant, but not earth shattering, it should get some extra points, but not a lot for that fact in evaluating it. If it actually improves, that's a different issue.  So, how much age is enough to get to peak, when we stop talking about "improvement" and start talking about "holding"?  Does a wine that survives extreme aging (say fifty years and out) get better just because it is so extreme and the wine happens to hold?  Can we automatically say that the aging process itself improved the wine beyond the point where it reached a reasonable balance?  

    Old wine fanatics represent a certain school of thought. The most common pejorative is the "British palate."  I have a friend who thinks that the real key to the stereotypical British palate is that Britain is cold, the wines don't have to travel far from France and British cellars are cold; thus, the wines are unusually well stored and not as far along as what we get in America, usually.  But let's ignore explanations for myths for the moment.  There IS certainly a  group of wine lovers--vanishingly small, I think---that just adore extremely old wines. The older, the better. Nothing can possibly be presented to them that is too old, and for which they do not make excuses.   Oxidation? No problem. Decay? No problem.  No defect is a problem, apparently.   It doesn't even seem to matter that the wine has no fruit left.

    Let me hasten to add that there is NO question that a wine must age a reasonable amount of time in order to be called a great wine. The ability to improve and hold for a reasonable amount of time--the key word there being REASONABLE--is a hallmark of a great wine. If all you want is something fruity that you can pop and pour, there is no reason to spend lots of money. You can do that with cheaper wines. Great wines need time to become harmonious and open with cellaring. There is no question that reasonable aging improves such wines.   This doesn't mean the wine has to be immortal, however. It doesn't mean 50 years is automatically better than 30 or that 30 is automatically superior to 25.  This article is aimed mainly at the concept of extreme age, and the conceit that old is always better. It is not intended to question the fact that great wines should age gracefully for a reasonable period of time depending on their varietal, and that cellaring will improve them.

    Some people tell us that the mere fact of extreme age lends something important to the wine. Usually, they cannot tell us what this important thing is, and they simply sum it up by calling the wine "complex." When pressed, they talk about tertiary aromas, and they mutter darkly about things apparently lesser tasters just cannot "get."   Ignoring that virtually no one will be around to sample those 50 year wines made today,  the first point I would make is that most 50 year wines aren't 50 year wines. They should have been drunk earlier---or would have been had they been in balance. The so-called complexities are usually the smell of decay and deteriorating fruit. You could get a lot of the same things I think by buying cheap wine designed to be drunk in five years and holding it for ten. 

    People used to put up with the aromas of decay and fading fruit because they had to, while awaiting the resolution of old-fashioned, astringent tannins.  Now, by habit we now call this profile "complex" and "normal."  This style of winemaking produced unbalanced wines that were generally unapproachable young. By the time the tannins came around, the fruit was in decay. Wines were made with huge tannins for a simple reason. They had to endure a lot of travel, and poor storage in eras before air conditioning was common. They needed to be preserved and they were designed to hold up under stress. The style of wine that some circles posit as a "traditional" one and something special is to me simply a historical accident forced upon us by circumstances.  People make a virtue out of necessity. And of course there are lots of people who have gotten in the habit of judging when a wine is ready solely based on tannin levels. If they perceive any, they exclaim, "Not ready! Give it five more years." Whether there will be any discernible fruit left is another issue that seems not to register. (Whether, if there is any fruit left, it can survive any longer once all the tannin is gone is generally ignored, too.) It is certainly true, to be sure, that there are a tiny number of wines that DO develop lovely aromatics and retain fruit with extreme age. They are rare, and hideously expensive for the subtleties they provide.  Most wines of extreme age, though, mostly show extreme age.

    All things have to be in balance.  The concept of BALANCE includes fruit.  Without balance, the wine is not improved with age, it is merely destroyed. Fruit is a living thing. It is not immortal. Nothing is.  

    Winemakers today make wines with supple and ripe tannins that are approachable younger and get drunk younger. This doesn't just include the Australians and Californians. To the contrary, these are things that Jean-Michel Cazes, Paul Pontallier and Michel Rolland say, too. Pontallier was quoted recently as saying a wine should be drinkable almost from the get-go. This is someone making Chateau Margaux. I think very few people are concerned with making wines that last 50 years these days. Most everyone though is interested in making wines that are approachable relatively young and hold for a reasonable time. I think that is the commonly accepted wisdom on how to make great wine these days.  

      Today,  it is usually not necessary to hold wines fifty+ years or thereabouts. It was never really desirable. (We're ignoring unusual wines like the fortifieds, which present different issues.)  The tannins are not such a big barrier to drinking the wines today. You can actually drink the wines when the fruit is still ripe and has flavor.  For some people this is a disturbing revelation that rebuts what they have learned about wine historically. They taste a wine, and, oddly, they say, "too fruity."  Well, it IS a fruit based product.  The wine should have some taste of the fruit that made it, shouldn't it? After all, winemakers spent a lot of effort getting good fruit into the bottle. 

    Thus, the first objective standard I would impose is that to be great a wine has to retain some fresh fruit that still tastes like what it was supposed to be.   Very old wines are the exact opposite of this. Many really old wines, of which I have had quite a few--and 50 years is just scratching the surface--do not come close to meeting this test. I do not find them great or complex. Just old and tired. I think the dominant impression I have of old wine tastings is that of the people around the room desperately trying to convince themselves something special is going on to justify the hideous expense, when most of them would be just as happy popping something younger and tastier. Personally, 9 times out of 10,  or maybe even 19 times out of 20, I'd rather have an inexpensive wine with some fruit. At least the value wine still has some taste of what it was supposed to be left. Yet some people apparently think this is a negative. Some friends and myself have joked that a certain type of person will invariably post a tasting note that goes like this:  "Rich and ripe, deep velvety fruit, this wine is concentrated and full of fruit flavor. I didn't like it."  For most people, I think, the old joke that the best thing you can say about an old wine is that it tastes as fresh as a young wine rings more true. I think most people insist on some life and freshness in the wine they paid good money for.

    But, hey, we want complexity, don't we?  What exactly is this "complexity" some supposedly find?  "Complex" is a neutral word, not necessarily a positive. All sorts of defects in wine have been justified on the ground of complexity. So, too, with really old wines. Why not blend in some Sauternes with some Burgundy? Wouldn't that be more complex, and create different and nuanced flavors, and new aromas? In a sense, yes. But we wouldn't think it was a good thing. There are people who love Sauternes that are no longer sweet, champagnes that have lost their bubbles and Bordeaux and Burgs so old that you can no longer discern any varietal characteristics in the fruit or even tell them apart any more.  Is that complex?  To some people, it is. But let's not turn eccentricity into a standard.

    I assume, therefore, that when people talk about "complex" they are using it in some non-pejorative sense.  What is that, exactly?  To me, the epitome of a complex Bordeaux is one in which I can discern the nuances of the grape blend and the terroir.  By this standard,  extreme age is  plainly the enemy of complexity. The ravages of age tend to attack and destroy the differences in wines.  Terroir? Forget it. For this reason, a Rhone winemaker once said he thought wines were truest to their terroir in their first ten years.  

    After long aging curves,  however,  you'll be lucky to identify a Burg from a Bordeaux in a blind tasting.  The wines become more and more alike as they pass from "reasonable window of drinkability" to antiques.  Their predominant feature becomes their age, as time destroys the varietal characteristics, taste and flavor of the fruit.  Simply put, I think that what some people refer to as additional complexity is simply the smell of decayed fruit, the aromas that derive from deterioration and decay, and so on.  I don't consider these good things. 

    Let me make clear again what am I not saying.  I am certainly not saying that no wine improves with cellaring. Some wines have to be cellared--like the ferociously tannic 1975 or 1986 Bordeaux--regardless whether their balance is sufficient to make cellaring truly rewarding.  This is because some of the old fashioned wines simply cannot be approached early on. Their tannins are too harsh. You have no choice but to wait and hope for the best.  Apart from the issue of letting tannins resolve and soften,  many wines have a reasonable life span, for much of which they improve with cellaring.  In tasting a wine right out of the barrel, you get something that is virtually grape juice. Personally, I'd prefer that to a tired old antique. But there's no need to choose one extreme or the other. Virtually any good wine needs some time to settle down and come together, and come into  balance.  That's the key.  You have to allow time to let the components integrate and meld together, as best as they are able, so that the fruit opens and expands,  and the wine provides a pleasing whole. This often takes a few years, noting that some wines like Bordeaux are likely to have longer windows and more tannin than wines like Burgundy. Some wines that are unbalanced from the start, will never have a perfect time for drinking. There will always have to be a compromise, but even they may benefit from some aging.  Is that "more complexity" from aging?  Yes, and with that I agree.  But that really is not the type of  moderate aging the old wine fanatics are interested in.  It is not enough to hold a Bordeaux fifteen or even twenty-five or thirty years.  It has to be well nigh immortal to be deemed great.  

     How many truly great old wines have you had?  About 1 in 20 I really enjoyed. About 1 in 10 aren't bad, but I tend to regret having paid money for them. As to how many are truly special ---damned few. That's a pretty bad bet if you're buying '45 Mouton or '29 Latour for $7000 a bottle.  Thus,  on top of everything else, on top of the fact that there really is not much benefit to this extended aging, other than, perhaps, to cure an imbalance that shouldn't have existed in the first place,  old wine is a risky game.  Once you get into these really extended aging wines, say, over 30 years or so, it becomes risky.   Once you're past 50 years, then you're playing with fire. The benefits are modest, often non-existent, and the negatives are legion.  Again, what is it exactly that you get from holding the wine for fifty years instead of fifteen?  To be sure, you may have no choice if the wine is so unbalanced that it has ferocious, astringent tannins.  But other than that,  what's the advantage? How many wines will you find that even survive?

     Let's see, taking Bordeaux as an example. What older wines could you buy with confidence?  I would not even suggest anything before the forties. When you get up to the forties, that era starts to provide some better experiences than the pre-war era, but they're having lots of problems these days. I think most of the 45s are drying out although people continue to cellar them due to their tannins. The 47s and 49s in many respects are better if well stored, but also more fragile and more likely to show serious decay. The most reliable vintage in Bordeaux in the '50s is 1959, which if well stored is in good shape,  and probably my favorite old wine vintage.  The '53s were way better 10 years ago IMHO. Sixties?  '61. '64 right bank, sort of. 66.  That's all folks. The '70s are a general disaster in Bordeaux, and the vintages in good shape are primarily '75, '78, and '79, although the last two can be fragile. I think the 1970 vintage itself is losing fruit, although many of the top wines are very fine.  Many think the '75s are too unbalanced to survive the long aging that their tannins require.  Of course, all this talk of vintages is a generalization. You cannot just pick ANY 1953.  The farther out you get, the fewer wines survive even in the best vintages.

    That's just the grim story in Bordeaux of course, which produces some of  the longest lived wines. If we talk Burgundy or California, well, it's a pretty rare 1945 we're going to be wanting to drink. Let's see. I think I have had a few very good Burgs from the '50s, of impeccable pedigree, storage, and hideous cost, and I have had a few others that were just holding on.  I did have a fairly nice '37 Chambertin. Some nice Dr. Barolet. On the whole I'd rather forget the whole thing and have a nice '90 Roumier Clos de la Bussière. It's a real short list IN Bordeaux, even shorter out of Bordeaux.  That adds up to me: pickings are pretty darned slim!  What do you get for the effort?

    The most amusing thing about the fixation in some quarters with older wines is the rather strong evidence that winemaking is so much better today. I.e., a lot of those older wines weren't much to write home about by modern standards even when at peak, I think. Read some books about, for instance, the horrible times many Bordeaux Chateaux had for much of the 20th Century. It seems hard to believe that winemakers so short on resources could consistently produce magnificent wines. 

    For me, in short, old wines mostly represent modern mythology. That complexity is often just the odor of dying fruit, mustiness, and oxidation.  Extreme age is usually the enemy of wine. The best do nothing to justify their hideous price tags.  Very few are in sound condition.     Judge these wines without making excuses for them.   No "Well, for its age...."   No "Well, matched up against a 1990 in prime shape in a blind tasting, of course it is overshadowed......."   Your results will be sobering.  And when you finally find one you really like, you'll hear: "Gee, it tastes like a younger wine." The ultimate compliment...

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