My wine breathes, has a nose, body, and legs, but no pulse!
(Part 5, by Raymond R. Wells, Ed.D.)
No pulse, but is it alive?
Wine has a birth (being made into wine), a youth (its early period), an adulthood (a plateau of ideal age for drinking), a slow decline into senescence (drinkable, but past its prime), and an ultimate death (if allowed to exist for so long). The length of time spent in each phase varies greatly with many variables, especially the type of wine and storage conditions. The previous parts of this series of articles have already discussed wines breathing and possessing a nose, body, and legs. Wine can’t scientifically be considered alive because it can’t react to its environment or reproduce; but I do personally tend to think of it as a living thing. It is not unusual for a wine writer to even assign feminine or masculine characteristics to some wines. Wine has also been called “bottled history” as a result of vineyard location, weather, soil, winemaker, vintage, and etc; each new vintage making an addition to history from the thousands of wineries around the world.
A frequent question related to the lifecycle of wine is: “When is the best time to drink a particular wine?” Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this question. First, recognize that most wines do not improve with age and are meant to be drunk within a couple of years after release. In the case of Beaujolais Nouveau, a weak vintage or poor producer might create wines that begin to decline immediately upon bottling; whereas Nouveaus from a strong producer in a good vintage might still be drinking well for a year or two, though they would not improve with the additional ageing. Alternatively, the 1977 Vintage Ports (an excellent, but very tannic vintage) are only recently starting to drink well and will last many additional decades with proper storage. The point in a wine’s life that one would consider its “best time” to be consumed also depends greatly on the preferences of the person drinking it.
There is the joke that the British drink their wines too old because they like to show off the dusty old bottles to their friends. The French drink theirs too young because they are afraid that the socialist government might confiscate them. And Americans drink theirs at just the right time because they don’t know any better.
In wine, truth and health!