Ageing of wine!

[Fentos1303]

So why is it we leave wine so long when bottled or in secondary fermenter? Does the taste actually get better or does it become stronger? I'm just starting out therefore intrigued as drank my first batch immediately and was lovely, would there be so much difference say left 6-8 weeks?

 

[Rocky]

Six to eight weeks would not have made that much of a difference but a couple of years would have. Next batch, put a few bottles away for a year or two and judge for yourself.

 

[Fentos1303]

I really can't wait that long! Ha but thanks

 

[bambiying]

I'm pretty much a newbie as well....I've made 2 kits, and a skeeter pee and a dragon blood. I bottled my second kit 2 months ago (a tropical riesling that I bumped the ABV up on) and when I did, it was very strong...kind of like flavored rocket fuel. I opened a bottle of it on Monday and wow, it has totally changed after the two months. It tastes like a cross between a niagara and a riesling now. Very nice and drinkable. Wine definitely gets better after you let it sit for a while. Take some of that wine that you made and store it away for a while and then give it a try again. I guarantee you that it will taste even better than it does now.

 

[Fentos1303]

Thanks for that! Good advice will definitely do that!

 

[ShelleyDickison]

I posted this earlier today as a stand alone.

Just a story for all the new wine makers out there. When the all knowing and all seeing say patience is your friend and you scoff and roll your eyes like I did please listen to them. I made a batch of Cranberry Pomegranate from juice back in December of 2012 and it was absolutely awful tasting. So tart and puckerery with such a hot alcohol taste I could have probably ran a rocket off of it. Well I checked on the forum and everything I read said to give it time so I did. I waited and waited and waited, made it a whole month before it drove me crazy and I had to try it.....after all it had aged right. It was horrible, worse than when I bottled it. I was so disappointed and frustrated that I decided I was going to empty all the bottles and try it again because I must have done something wrong. Well I set them aside to deal with after the holidays and then life happened. A couple broken bones, a couple of surgeries and my beautiful fourth grand daughter being born, plus my youngest and her family moving to Japan, the bottles never got emptied, well lets be honest, I forgot about them. So today I was going through my wines to do some updating and I found them, was totally shocked I still had them. Anyway I decided to open them and was floored by the differnece that time made, it had only been about 8 months. It is now smooth with barely any tartness, just a tiny bit you can feel in the back of your throat and the alchol burn is almost non existent. So instead of emptying the bottles I will now let them sit longer and check them in a few more months. Moral of the story...aging may not improve people but it does wonders for wine.

 

[cimbaliw]

I'm with bambiying, I'm getting enough ahead in stock that I can have wine from a different batch every night for at least two weeks. Some stuff we're drinking sooner and some were at no more than 1 bottle/month. I'm having the best time checking out the integration of flavors in a given bottle over time. I do tend to sneak tastes at every stage figuring someday I'll be able to say "if I do this now, it will taste like X later." My humble $0.02's worth; make a bunch so you can start aging longer without depleting your stock.

BC

 

[Sammyk]

We have 30 some wines that are drinkable and more that are still aging. So we have a nice selection to choose from each trip to the cellar.
Actually we only go down there a couple of times a week and bring up a bunch and put them in the fridge.

 

[deboard]

You didn't mention what kind of wine you are making, dry or sweet. If you prefer to make sweet wines, then in my opinion they don't need as much aging, although they can definitely improve with some aging. Sugar hides a lot of faults, including lack of aging.

Dry wines, on the other hand, really should be aged. I've seen such a difference in wines after a year of aging, dry wines go from somewhat undrinkable to excellent.

But wine does not get stronger (alcohol % anyways) when aging, so that's not a reason. For dry wines, harsh tannins will soften with age, and acidity may drop due to tartaric acid dropping out. There's probably more than that to it of course.