Questions Uncorked

Aug 18, 2008

Hi Mike -

Thanks so much for visiting the blog. You have quite a collection – I’m envious!

It sounds like you have a great storage set-up and your temperature is
excellent. In terms of when I think you can start opening your wines, well, to be frank with you, that’s a tough question. There really isn’t a right or
wrong time to open your wine – it sounds like you have collected some
wonderful wines and I can promise you that you will appreciate them at every
stage of their development. A well-made wine, even at a young age, is truly
a thing of beauty.

You are correct that many of the great Bordeaux wines should be aged for
15-20 years. But many wines will hit a very drinkable stage at a much
earlier point, so you should not feel like you have to wait this long. I
would suggest that most of the wines in your cellar will be very drinkable
at between 8 to 10 years of age.

Given how much this collection obviously means to you, one thing that would
be a good idea would be to make a list of your wines and then check out the
ratings from three different experts – I’d pick Parker, the Wine Spectator
and either Decanter or Jancis Robinson. In each column I would put their
suggestions for when these wines will be at their “peak” and then you can
take the average of the three. Sort your list from low to high and then you
pretty much have the order of how you should go through your 700 bottles!

Let me know if you have any specific questions, though, and also if this is a
suggestion that might work for you.

Most of all, I want to make sure that you don’t worry too much about
aging your wines the “right” amount of time. It is more important to me
that you have the opportunity to taste the wines you have spent so much time
collecting. I don’t want you to miss out on such pleasure!

Cheers,
Sheri Morano