A Report From Wine Explorer Diego Samper
Does a wine really need to cost $35 to age well?
I was scrolling through Instagram the other day when a woman studying to become both a Master of Wine and a Master Sommelier caught my attention.
Her name is Cokie Ponikvar, and she goes by @cokiesworldofwine on Instagram. This week, she was studying the wines of Argentina for her exams and posted a video about them.
That’s quite an undertaking. Either qualification takes years of studying, tasting, spitting into buckets, and getting comfortable with being wrong in public.
She’s going after both. I wish her luck.
But something else caught my attention.
Someone had asked her how much they should spend on a bottle from Argentina worth aging.
Her answer, as I remember it, was around $35.
Now, I like a good rule of thumb. They’re useful, particularly when you’re standing in a wine shop surrounded by 400 bottles, trying to make a decision before the fellow behind the counter loses patience.
But I started wondering about that number.
What happens at $34?
Does the wine give up? Does some microscopic accountant inside the bottle decide it hasn’t earned the right to grow old?
Of course not.
The bottle doesn’t know what you paid for it.
And while $35 might be perfectly reasonable advice for someone shopping for a cellar, it doesn’t really explain what makes a wine worth keeping.
For that, we need to understand the chemistry behind it.
Most wines are meant to be enjoyed relatively young. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We like those wines here in the club, too.
A fresh, fruity wine opened with dinner can be an excellent thing. It doesn’t need another 15 years in a basement to justify its existence.
But some wines have another life ahead of them.
Take a young Cabernet Sauvignon. It might come out swinging, full of blackberries and tannins that leave your mouth feeling like you’ve been chewing on a teabag.
Give the right Cabernet 10 years, and something interesting can happen. A good Malbec can do it too.
The fruit changes. The tannins soften. Aromas of tobacco, dried flowers, leather, and mushrooms may appear where there was once mostly fruit.
The wine has been quietly changing through a series of chemical reactions.
Some compounds break down. Others combine. What you smell, taste, and feel in your mouth changes along with them.
The trick is knowing which wines have enough going on to make that journey worthwhile.
What Makes a Wine Worth Aging?
Acidity is one of the clues.
It gives wine that mouthwatering freshness, but it also helps keep things in balance over time. It’s one reason certain German Rieslings can age for decades without having much tannin at all.
Tannins are another clue, particularly in reds. They come mostly from grape skins and seeds, sometimes from stems and oak. With time, their chemistry changes, and that rough, drying sensation can become gentler.
But here’s the catch.
A wine with enormous tannins and little else to offer can become an old wine with enormous problems.
You need fruit, concentration, acidity, and balance. Enough substance to remain interesting after the youthful flavors begin fading.
Sugar can also play a part. Some of the longest-lived wines in the world are sweet. Great Sauternes and certain Rieslings can develop for decades, with acidity keeping all that sweetness from becoming tiresome.
Alcohol matters too, though a higher percentage doesn’t automatically mean a longer life.
There isn’t one magic ingredient.
And even when the chemistry is promising, there’s another problem.
Your apartment. Your house. Your cellar.
Wine is sensitive to heat, light, and excessive oxygen exposure. A small amount of oxygen is involved in how wine matures, but too much can ruin the whole affair.
You can buy a magnificent bottle, leave it in a hot room for 15 summers, and discover you’ve been carefully storing vinegar’s distant cousin.
A cool, dark place with a reasonably stable temperature gives it a much better chance.
Does Price Really Matter?
Back to the $35
Here’s where I think the advice deserves a little sympathy.
Price does tell us something about wine. Just not everything.
Land costs money. Good vineyard work costs money. Oak barrels, careful winemaking, and small production can all push up the price.
Then there’s reputation. Scarcity. Marketing. And, in certain parts of Burgundy, the extraordinary privilege of owning a few rows of famous dirt.
Some of those costs are connected to making a wine capable of aging. Others have little to do with it.
So I wouldn’t tell someone to ignore price entirely.
But I’d rather know who made the wine, and who you’re buying it from.
A producer with a track record of wines aging well tells you more than a price tag.
And remember, being capable of surviving 20 years isn’t the same as being worth drinking after 20 years.
We tend to assume older means better.
It doesn’t. It just changes.
Some wines become more interesting with age. Others lose the very thing that made them enjoyable in the first place.
If you’re curious, buy two bottles of something you enjoy. Drink one now and put the other away for a few years.
Maybe the second will be better. Maybe it won’t. And maybe your taste will have changed in the meantime.
So, coming back to Cokie’s advice, I think $35 is a perfectly good rule of thumb. It gives people somewhere to start. The trouble is that the price can’t tell you when to open the bottle.
There’s another saying I like: Better to open a bottle a day too early than a day too late.
Diego Samper
Wine Explorer
