Blick answers your wine questions: “100 bottles of vintage wine: How do I test drinkability?”

class=”sc-29f61514-0 icZBHN”>

In fact, Blick reader Urs Baumann’s question can be answered relatively easily: pop the cork and try it. It’s a shame if the bottle you open is an expensive Bordeaux or Barolo that hasn’t yet reached its optimum drinking range. Therefore, the question often arises as to whether a more systematic method could be found to evaluate the drinkability of older wines.

The vast majority of wines available on the market do not benefit from additional bottle storage and should be consumed immediately after purchase. So older wines are not automatically better than younger wines just because they have a few more years. With cheap and fruity wines, the situation is usually the opposite; namely young and old wines.

Edibility can be determined this way

Leading wine retailers offer drinking display tables that are updated annually. It lists the most important wine regions and, depending on the vintage, shows whether the wines need to be kept for a few more years or are already ready to drink. However, depending on the year and region, such tables can only provide a general description, so differences between individual wineries are not taken into account.

Common wine critic portals such as “The Wine Advocate” give a recommended drinking range for each wine; for example, from 2028 to 2040. However, such offers are associated with costs, and the liquor display tables of leading wine retailers are free. The question here is how detailed you want the information to be. In addition, the statements made require professional storage, which may not always be possible at home.

Practical means have long been available for opening wine without pulling the cork. Coravin works by exchanging odorless gas and a very fine needle that reseals the cork after it is removed. For example, the same bottle may be re-evaluated for drinkability every three months before opening remaining bottles of the same wine.

Source : Blick