Learn about vintage wine
We have been working with vintage wines for over 18 years now, and want to pass on some of our experiences. Some of the best wine experiences can come from vintage wines, which we define as being plus 20 years old. Opening a vintage wine is like opening Pandora's box, because you never really know what will come out of the bottle. But one thing is certain, and that is that wine cannot be produced as vintage and that the many fun notes only come through long-term aging.
Expectations
It is first and foremost important to consider what you are going to encounter when you venture into this special universe. It is certainly not the same as when drinking young wines. The primary fruit is no longer dominant, but rather the tertiary aroma and flavor notes that only develop during aging. If you are lucky, these vintage wines are some of the most wonderful, and the aging notes are complex and diverse. The wine is old and has been trapped in the bottle. There will often be notes of mushrooms, gunpowder and parmesan before the fruit penetrates through through oxidation. The wine is ok if there is fruit in the aroma and flavor.
Preparations and opening of vintage wine
It is important to ensure that the wine has stood upright for at least 2 days and preferably longer before opening. This is solely so that it can settle and the sediments can sink to the bottom. If the wine has travelled by parcel post, it is even more important that it has the opportunity to settle as you can expect motion sickness. Opening can be done with a regular corkscrew, but it is clearly easier to open with an “Ar-so” which can be found right here . Should the unfortunate event happen that there are cork residues in the wine, these can be poured into a sample glass or through a sieve into a carafe.
Oxygenation of vintage wines
There is no exact science to oxygenating vintage wine, but after opening +1000
bottles, a picture begins to emerge. The challenge in connection with oxygenation is that the wine relatively quickly goes towards a vinegar state when exposed to oxygen. Whether it takes 30 minutes or 24 hours is individual from bottle to bottle and depends on the method chosen for oxygenation.
First oxidation variant is slow ox in the bottle , where you pour a little from the top of the bottle so that the oxygenation surface in the bottle becomes a little larger. Then you let it stand for at least 5 hours and in some cases even longer. This method is slow but is particularly effective with Riserva varieties.
Second variant slow ox in a carafe or Magrethe bowl is in principle the same as the first method, but more uncontrolled. The recommendation with this method is to keep an eye on the wine while smelling or tasting it during the process.
Third variant is an oxygenation of about 30 minutes in a carafe, where you also ensure that no sediment comes from the bottle.
Fourth variant is oxygenation in the bottle for about 1 hour followed by about 10 minutes in the glass. Here you will find that most of the stuffy notes from many years of confinement have disappeared and the fruit comes out of the glass.
Fifth variant is the one I personally use, where you pour the wine directly into the glass after opening and take the whole experience journey from the first strange stuffy notes, and quietly experience the fruit penetrating before oxidation takes over and the wine finally collapses. A wonderful journey that can vary from 30 minutes to 24 hours and sometimes longer.
Vintage wines and quality
That vintage wines have quality and can last through many years of aging is not a given in advance. The better the starting point, the greater the chance that the wine has survived the long aging. There are a number of factors that must be present for the wine to survive and develop over time. These factors are acid, tannin, sugar, alcohol and the more the better.
Some wines are more suitable for aging than others and here those with high tannin and acid content such as Nebbiolo, Cabernet Sauvignon, Sangiovese are good examples. In relation to the white wines we know Riesling as having a long shelf life and certain top Chardonnay based wines primarily due to barrel aging and high quality. Most fortified and dessert wines have a long shelf life, due to their sweetness and alcohol percentage. Champagne is also known for being able to age and develop special tertiary notes.
Tertiary notes
To understand tertiary notes, you need to know about primary and secondary notes. Primary notes are the aroma and taste created by the grapes, the field, the country where the wine comes from. All things that are difficult to change, but which of course vary from wine to wine depending on the origin: “ When you talk about primary notes, you often talk about the fruit .”
Secondary notes, on the other hand, are influenced by the winemaker and are those that emerge when the wine undergoes production. This can be the way in which the wine has been aged, how long a maceration has been carried out or which barrels the wine has been stored and matured in the cellar. These factors in turn leave an imprint on the aroma and taste of each wine and create diversity:
"When you talk about secondary notes, you often talk about barrel aging and fermentation."
Tertiary aromas and flavors are the aromas and flavors that are formed through aging, first in the cellar and then in the bottle. This is best described by explaining that the tertiary notes develop at the expense of the primary notes, which actually means that the fruit takes a little back seat while other fun and more quirky and mature notes come to the fore. When talking about tertiary notes, we often talk about ripe fruit, overripe fruit, rotten fruit or dried flowers/potpourri. You also often experience extra boosts in aromas and flavors such as leather, tobacco, licorice, camphor. In addition, varieties such as parmesan, wet forest floor, sulfur, gunpowder, mushrooms, sweet tobacco, cola, smoke, cloves, spice cake, vanilla, caramel, barbecue smoke, nuts, dried fig and wet wood.
" When you talk about tertiary notes, you're talking about storage"
