Caret cellars how to#
Caret cellars drivers#

The truth is, no amount of time will fix an awkward wine. Yet they promise rich rewards for collectors too, willing to forget the wine in their cellars for a few years. They have to say that (all those bottles aging in the back seat of the car on the way home from the grocery store). Talk to any maker of top-notch Bordeaux-style wines today and they’ll tell you that every vintage they produce is perfectly ready to enjoy on release. Old-school wisdom had it that serious reds started out life with dominating, angular tannins, a tightly closed nose and general rambunctiousness that needed time in the bottle to smooth into civility. But there is definitely a little magic (maybe randomness) that we can’t quantify or define.” Sound like a crap shoot? Not with established winemakers that have a history of producing wines that age well. “It’s easy,” he says to descend down the rabbit hole of wine pH, potential alcohol, titratable acidity and tannin.

Caret cellars drivers#

“I’ve tasted plenty of cool-vintage, under-ripe wines with terrific aging potential that I’ve had absolutely no interest in saving.” While the two main drivers of ageability in his book are site and vintage, he cites the need, after that, for a winemaking team to harness that potential in some methodical ways-and some not so methodical. The “lively” part of the aging equation suggests wines from cooler years that allowed the fruit to retain good levels of acidity will fare better over time. A good hallmark of an age-worthy wine is being able to open a bottle and drink it with family and friends over an evening, and discovering something new with each smell or taste.” Do cooler vintages produce wines that will age better? Dalla Valle describes it this way: “When evaluating whether a wine will age well, I consider the structure of the wine as well as the depth, complexity and concentration of flavors and overall liveliness. The next layer of markers involves a sensory trial-you do have to taste the wine! The traits generally considered the tripod of longevity are complex flavors, a firm tannin structure and lively acidity. You can’t expect a wine to have more to say over time unless it came from a good place, a vineyard with a track record for long-lived wines (and, it should be added, a life well-lived as Crafton says, “The goal isn’t just for the wine to endure, it actually needs to get better.”). The old saying “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” might have been coined with wine in mind. And the winery now gives all consumers the chance to taste the moments of earlier years captured in the bottle: With every new release, they re-release a vintage from 10 years prior and library tastings are part of a new program onsite. And in some wines, it’s a single spot.” Clearly, collectors see that spot as worth pursuing Chateau Montelena’s older vintages have many fans. And it’s unique to that specific wine and, in some cases, that bottle. “There’s a period,” he says, “when the character of the vineyard, the vintage and the winemaking harmoniously meld.

After that, the grocery store string cheese didn’t quite work.” Crafton admits he’s a little biased about Montelena’s older bottles, but his description is compelling. “I had no idea such a simple cheese could be so good. Matt Crafton, winemaker at Chateau Montelena, whose reds famously unwind and evolve in beautiful ways, makes a good case for changing that: “It’s sort of like the first time I tasted fresh, homemade mozzarella,” he says. The short of it is, many wine drinkers just like young wine better. The average consumer is broadly familiar with lively fresh fruit flavors in young reds, but not so much with the dried fruit and earthier notes of slate, loam and tobacco that tend to emerge over time. Every good joke contains a kernel of truth. It’s a running joke that the average bottle of wine is aged just as long as it takes to get it home from the supermarket. Just because you can age a wine, should you? We asked a couple of winemakers whose bottles famously blossom over time what they’re stuffed with in the first place, how they set up a wine to age and what makes a bottle of Cab at its peak a wonderful thing.

That’s true even for Cabernet Sauvignon, generally known for its longevity. How Hanchic and Holy Basil Are Leading LA’s Next Generation of Asian-American Restaurants Taste Test: Woodford Reserve’s New Bourbon Is ‘Classic Woodford on Steroids’

Caret cellars how to#

How to Make a Bellini, the Effervescent Peach and Prosecco Cocktail That Isn’t Just for Brunch