Aging of Wines

Has anyone come across information on the aging of wines? Some examples of what I'm interested in: Why older wines are typically served after their younger counterparts - this seems counterintutive to serve more bolder tannic wines before the more elegant aged wines. I've also heard 'experts' claim that a 375ml bottle will age twice as fast as 750ml bottle......is their any true science that backs this up? And does this mean that a 1.5 liter will age twice as slow as a 750ml? In other words when Rober Parker states that a wine will age well for 20 years.......he refers to 750ml bottle and you can expect 40 years from a 1.5 liter bottle?
Thanks for any information or thoughtful opinions you can provide,
Jim

Jim,

there is lots written on the topic and others will point you to sources I am sure. The short version of aging related to bottle size is thermal mass and wine to head space ratio. Smaller bottle less thermal mass more likely to be influenced by temperature swings and the higher the temperature the faster the speed of much too complex reactions involved in the aging process. Likewise the smaller the bottle the greater the O2 to wine ratio increasing the oxidation.

The changes are not linear so one can not state that a magnum takes twice as long to mature as a 75cl.

Brian

[David M. Bueker]

As I said in another thread, the wine will make fools of us if we really think we know how it is going to age.

There is a lot of information out there, and much of it is useful as general guidelines, but we do not cellar general guidelines. Individual bottles of wine follow their own paths, and between winemaking, transport and storage are exposed to so many variables that my 10 years may be your 20 or someone else's 5.

Why older wines are typically served after their younger counterparts - this seems counterintutive to serve more bolder tannic wines before the more elegant aged wines.

I don't know that this is 'typically' the case. There are arguments for both sides.

I think one argument for serving younger wines first is that the meal/event should build to a crescendo.

But like so many things it all depends..

While I agree that what is good in 10 years or 20 years is highly subjective, I don't believe it is completely random and there is still room for some science in this evaluation.....or at least an averaging of collective subjectivity leading to some sort of guideline.

And regarding there being no typical standard for serving older wines first or last.....my experience may be an outlier where just about all (possibly all) multiple vintage tastings I have been to have involved serving the older wines last. I agree that it is a nice crescendo to have the oldest last, but it's hard to believe that if you are drinking (not spitting out) an entire flight of wines prior to the most aged (perhaps most delicate and nuanced wine), that you will fully enjoy what could have be the star of the show. Maybe I need to find a poll on who serves old wines last........as I said, my experience could be the outlier.
Thanks for the inputs,
Jim

[David M. Bueker]

Jim,

It's not random, but it is affected by many more variable that we can understand, many of which we don't know about (e.g. transit temperatures) until it's too late.

I agree that it is a nice crescendo to have the oldest last, but it's hard to believe that if you are drinking (not spitting out) an entire flight of wines prior to the most aged (perhaps most delicate and nuanced wine), that you will fully enjoy what could have be the star of the show.

I agree. And of course it all depends on how many wines you have before this peak. At a normal dinner with 2-3 wines it might not be a problem. At a marathon tasting that is a different story.

Maybe I need to find a poll on who serves old wines last

Feel free to start up another poll. It's a common topic on this (and other) wine boards so you could always do some search engine digging if you wanted old data. But why not add some new data!

It's true that bottle age in varying ways, and also that different people can have widely divergent ideas on how a wine ages and where maturity lies.

That said, in MY opinion if you had to generalize, I'd say a magnum tends to age about 25-30% slower than a 750.

As to drinking order, It's complicated.
I'd say my vertical experience is split about evenly between:
1) youngest to oldest (the way my group did Haut Brion)
2) oldest to youngest (we did Gruaud that way, and Clos de Vougeot)
3) mixed
The latter is my personal favorite. There's a lot to be said to grouping "lesser" vintages together - a Medoc '93 might have  more in common with a '97 or '99 than a '96 or '95, and a delicate '81 might not be best in a flight with a young and vigorous '82. If we are doing  a group-organized vertical (as opposed to one host) we usually discuss this ad nauseum. Part of the decision might be the type of restaurant. if not at a home. If we're at a steakhouse, I
might be voting based on trying to ensure that the wines that come around main course are bigger/more tannic, as I like my steak blue to rare. Maybe not best for a '79 or '70 Bdx. Part will be decided by , what the lineup is- if the older wines are '66, '67, or '81, it might be quite different than '75s and '86s.
Another factor is sheer number of wines. A dinner with 5 wines is easy to go younger to older (with the idea of going simpler to more complex) , but if 17 wines I might not want palate fatigue when we get to the '59 or '61 claret.

Has anyone come across information on the aging of wines? Some examples of what I'm interested in: Why older wines are typically served after their younger counterparts - this seems counterintutive to serve more bolder tannic wines before the more elegant aged wines.

I think things are usually done in that order (youngest to oldest) so that each wine is shown in its best light. If one expects that the older vintages are going to be better in some way than the younger ones, then there would be a let-down if you served the younger wine after the (better) older one.

I've also heard 'experts' claim that a 375ml bottle will age twice as fast as 750ml bottle......is their any true science that backs this up? And does this mean that a 1.5 liter will age twice as slow as a 750ml?

It's definitely been demonstrated time and again that the larger the bottle, the slower the wine seems to age. The last time I looked, there wasn't any well established scientific explanation for the phenomenon. The best scientific conjecture was that it's related to the surface area of the bottle that the wine is exposed to. Many chemical reactions are surface-based. So I think the answer is yes, it's a real phenomenon, but nobody knows for sure why it happens.

In other words when Robert Parker states that a wine will age well for 20 years.......he refers to 750ml bottle and you can expect 40 years from a 1.5 liter bottle?

The convention is that one speaks about storage in 750ml bottles unless it's explicitly stated otherwise. I think Parker states this explicitly every now and then in The Wine Advocate.

-Paul W.

Jim, nothing to add to what's been said by our experienced geeks, except welcome to the forum.

[David M. Bueker]

By the way, since it hasn't been said - the relationship from 375 ml to 750 ml to magnum is not linear (all things being equal).

It's not hard to believe that the larger a bottle, the slower it ages. The question is given all other factors remaining constant, how much slower or faster do bottles age. When I asked Mr. Robert Parker via email, he (or whoever answers his emails) chose to answer it as linear....stating that a 375 ages twice as fast as 750. I have trouble believing the 'twice' part....not that it ages faster. But perhaps some things are just not meant to be answered and I'll start buying all my wine in Nebuchadnezzars to be safe.

I don't think that anyone has mentioned that bottles in the same case may age differently. The Bordeaux wine critic, Jean-Marc Quarin, has said that each bottle is a distinct micro-environment. However, the primary cause of ageing variability is cork performance (other than TCA) but I have also noticed that brett and VA seem to vary from bottle to bottle.

That said, I think that the rules of thumb given in this thread are about right; magnum slower that bottle and half-bottle quicker but not in a linear relationship. The best bottle is likely to taste fresher than the worst magnum.

By the way, since it hasn't been said - the relationship from 375 ml to 750 ml to magnum is not linear (all things being equal).

If one assumes that the critical quantity is the surface-to-volume ratio, then we should presume that the relationship would scale as the inverse of the cube root of volume. If we were interested in predicting this sort of thing, an important caveat.

Mark Lipton