Ready or Not

One of the most frequent, and perfectly reasonable questions we’re asked to field in the wine corner from day to day has to do with the state of readiness of a given bottle: Is this wine ready to drink?  The answer, in brief, is always yes.  It is longstanding wine corner policy that everything on our shelves be in a condition to drink with pleasure and interest, as is, without any need for cellaring by you. This, we think, is in keeping with pretty much everything else we sell at FKC.

We don’t ask you to stash the olive oils, the pickles, the pâtes de campagne or the cloth-bound cheddars away in a cool cellar for a few months or years to bring out their best. They’re all ready to break into and enjoy. Ah, but wine is a different matter, you say. Well, yes and no. Maturation is an indispensable developmental step for most wines. Even the most naive Beaujolais Nouveau or casual farm-style fizz needs some alone time to pull itself together after enduring the trauma of crushing, pressing and fermentation — but exactly how much varies enormously.

Wines carrying an appellation designation (Côtes du Rhône or Chianti Classico for example) are subject to specific legal requirements for maturation in cask (wood, cement, stainless steel, small or large as the case may be), plus some additional time in bottle before release. Ascending the appellation value scale typically means more mandated time in cask and bottle before it leaves the cellar to be sold.

As with all appellation rules, these are minimums which a winemaker can exceed, but not fall short of. This is why some wines can be released weeks after harvest; others after a few months; still others only after a year or several years.

It may come as a surprise to learn that not all wine is engineered to benefit from extended bottle age. This is in part because while the flavors of very mature wine were once in favor, they are much less so now. Even wine historically built for long cellaring such as top-tier Bordeaux and high-end Barolo are today designed to be approachable much earlier in their life cycles.

The truth is that current tastes are much less attuned to the nuances of superannuation than those of yore, and it’s now time for the notion wine improves with age to make way for the more strictly correct proposition wine changes with age.  It’s entirely up to you to decide if that change is desirable, undesirable, or merely another state to be appreciated for what it offers.

Is this wine ready to drink?  We’d say yes. But if you disagree — and you’re free to — there’s always the cellar.