Wine Ageing Questions (17 November)

The following questions were received from Victor Ng and I thought they may interest some of our less expert readers.

I am a Malaysian working in China and have been drinking wine for the past 10 years. I find that my preference for wine style has been ever changing. Right now I usually go for medium body and the so called elegant wine. For Australian red wine which is usually big and full, I will go for early vintage i.e. at least 7 years old. I have been keeping new wine in my fridge and now enjoying the fruit of Vasse Felix Cab Sauv 99, Rosemount Show Reserve Cab Sauv 98, GSM 98, Traditional 98, Stonewell Shiraz 96, Jim Barry Mcrae Wood 99 and Henschke Keyneton 00. However I am not always lucky as some wine cannot be kept for so long and has become sherry like flavor due to oxidation.

Anyway the above is not to show off or anything like that (anyway most of the wine I mentioned are cheap except Stonewell) but rather to give a brief introduction of myself. I will go straight to the question and hope you would enlighten me.

1. When you said some wine have to be aged in order to develop complexity, do you mean it will have extra flavor? What I can think of is the tannin and acidity will be softened and made it more easy drinking. For example if I compare Stonewell shiraz 96 which I took in 2002 and 2007, the aroma has developed from fresh berry to pastry like flavor. On the pallet except it is more approachable, the complexity is still the same to me.

2. When you said the wine is sleeping now but will open up later, what has caused this to happen? Are all wine or only good wine will experience this sleeping stage?

3. Very often I come across tasting note saying “well integrated oak”, what do they mean by that? What will the wine taste like if the oak is not well integrated?

4. I also come across many tasting notes trying to describe tannin such as fine tannin, raw edge tannin, hard and soft tannin and etc. What has caused tannin to have so many different types?

TORB Responds: You ask some interesting and very complex questions. If I answered them completely, it would almost be enough to fill a book, so I will try and touch on the highlights.

In order to answer some of your questions, I will briefly explain the ageing process of wine.

When the red grapes are first picked and crushed, it just tastes like pure grape juice. Once the yeast is introduced, be it artificially or naturally, the wine ferments and happily bubbles away converting sugar into alcohol. Once the wine has been through its primary fermentation, it tastes like alcoholic grapefruit juice. For want of a better description, it's not only youthful; it’s powerful and often raw.

Basically the wine is made up of three major components. The fruit flavours, the acid and the tannins. The fruit flavour is in its primary stage and often fairly one-dimensional. The acid can also be very fresh or even sometimes a little sharp. The tannins are interesting. They come from a number of components. Firstly, the grape skins themselves. They also come from the pips and stalks. If the wine is pressed too hard the tannins will be more noticeable. There is one other factor that influences the tannins; the oak.

If the wine is placed into new oak, the more influence and oak tannin will exert on the wine. The courser the grain, the greater and more noticeable the tannins will be; the tighter the grain, the tighter the tannins. Many of the Shiraz wines that have been matured in French oak often show more elegance and tighter tannins than a similar wine aged in American oak.

As the wine spends time in barrel, a tiny amount of air manages to seep in and this helps to soften the wine. You may have heard of the term microoxygenation. This process basically introduces small, controlled amounts of oxygen into the wine (normally in a stainless steel tank) in an endeavour to make the wine more approachable in a faster timeframe. Likewise, when the wine is racked, a small amount of oxygen is also introduced. As the wine sits in barrel, and it doesn't matter whether it's a small barrel with loads of oak influence, or a huge old vat, the wine starts to soften and integrate.

The tannins softens, the acid becomes less pronounced, and the wine starts to lose its primary fruit character slowly. Once the wine comes out of the oak and goes into bottle, it continues to mature slowly. Over time, the tannins soften further and may even drop out completely, and that is why you frequently see lots of sludge and sediment in the bottom of old wine. The flavour moves from its primary state, taking on more complex flavours, often picking up leathery characters.

If for example you take something like the 96 Stonewell, at 10 years of age it will be at peak. It will then start going downhill, take on increasing amounts of leathery characteristics, lose its fruit flavour and eventually wind up like vinegar.

If a wine like this has oxidised in a period of less than 10 years, it is through cork failure, not a fault of the wine. If the wine is a $5 rough red that is designed to be drunk immediately, it won't have the tannin structure, or the acid, to support a slow and gradual life cycle. It will be fine when as young, but then will be passed it, or over the hill, fairly quickly.

If your wine is being kept cool, the sorts of wines that you mention should all last seven years.

In regard to your question about sleeping, this is one of the great unknowns. Certainly wines that are designed to be consumed early don’t do it. Wines that are designed for medium to long term ageing often do, and you can't always pick when it is going to happen. Most of the time it is fairly soon after bottling, and the length of time that it will sleep is about as long as a piece of string. Even then, wine is not that simple. On occasions I have had wine that was say six or seven years old and I thought the wine was starting to go south. A year or two later, it had bounced right back again and was in the prime of its life, ready for round two. Admittedly the situation is not very common, but it does happen.

In terms of your question in relation to well integrated oak, this one is a little easier to answer. If wine goes into a brand-new barrel, and its tasted three weeks later, the impact of the oak is tremendous and you can damn near spit out woodchips. It’s raw and not pleasant. Over time, the fruit leeches into the barrel and the flavour of the oak leeches back into the wine. During this process, if there is sufficient fruit, eventually, even if it is in the bottle, the fruit will absorb the oak characters and they will shine through.

If you ever try a wine like Penfold St Henri, as it is aged in huge old oak vats, there is no oak influence at all. At the other extreme, try a wine like a 1998 Yalumba Octavius to see the difference.

The 96 Stonewell was aged in a combination of French and American oak. The French oak component made the wine a lot more approachable on its release than the 94 vintage, which was matured in American oak.

To further answer your question in regard to tannins, remember they come from skins, pips, stalks, and oak. If the grapes are not properly ripe, the tannins would be ripe either, and they will have a green edge to them. If the oak is new and coarse grain, the tannins will show the impact of the oak. Hard tannins are normally associated with either drought years, or pressing the wine too hard. Soft tannins are normally from wine that has not had a lot of skin contact and/or has been handled gently.

There are some other tricks that can affect the tannins, like reverse osmosis, fining, filtering etc.

I hope this helps you a little.