This is the reason that Dragon's Blood and Skeeter Pee are fast drinkers. They do not have the depth or structure of a heavy red and they are able to blend out faster. Dragon's Blood being palatable immediately, but notably better within only a few weeks.
Dave, ya hit the nail squarely on the head. As BigDaveK put it, wine is very complex, and not all wines are alike. Whites and lighter fruits have a lot less of everything (constituents), so there are fewer chemical changes that will occur, and the ones that occur appear to progress more rapidly. Lighter red grapes and any grape fermented in a lighter style (less time on the skins), have a longer period. Heavy reds, including a few fruits such as Elderberry, have so much more going on inside, and take the longest.
IMO, tannin is the big one -- the softening of tannins takes time.
I was very happy with my 2019 Merlot and Zinfandel during aging, but the first bottles I tested a few months after bottling were disappointing. Both are high ABV (~15.7%) and were very much out of balance. So I gave them another year to see what happened, and honestly wasn't happy with either. Not bad wines, but out of balance. Neither tasted quite right.
So I started using them up. Not rapidly, as neither wine had peaked, but I was not saving them as I had been. However, I opened a Merlot last night (now 3 years 3 months old), and WOW! The balance has shifted. It's not a great wine, but it's darn good. I've got 15 bottles left and they will be drunk sparingly. The Zinfandel is also more in balance (it's mature now) and that will get used first.
I subscribe to the 'if it tastes good, drink it' club. As a fail safe to that, I make enough that I will have much to sample as aging progresses.
Bingo! I was reserving my 2020 Sauvignon Blanc -- my son & I split 7 gallons of juice, so I had just 15 bottles. When young this may have been the best white I've made. So I doled it out sparingly, to make it last. Unfortunately, by last September (~22 months old) it was in decline, so I'm using up the last few bottles.
Similarly, the Chardonnay I made that same year for my son's wedding reception also started declining before the 2 year mark. We only had a few bottles left, so it wasn't a problem. At Christmas my son commented that it did it's job (was pleasing at the reception), and the last few bottles being less pleasing wasn't a problem.
The one surefire way to make wine mature and peak sooner that I've found is...size.
I will be happy to be corrected, but having a lower volume of wine exposed to equal parts of air as a larger batch could certainly change flavor structure, due to O2 absorption, but is that really aging faster? Are the major chemical reactions that take place in the first three months actually happening significantly faster in a smaller batch?
I read an article in the Wine Spectator circa 1990 regarding German Riesling from the late 1700's. Scarily enough, these few bottles were still good -- a fine needle was used to withdraw samples for testing. All the bottles were oversized, and I recall a comment that most long-lasting wines are bottled in large bottles.
IIRC, the explanation for larger bottles aging better is the O2 ingress through the cork, as well as any light penetration of the bottle, is better absorbed by the large volume of wine. This makes sense, e.g., 375 ml, 750 ml, and 1500 ml bottles all have the same cork, but O2 ingress has less overall effect on larger volumes.
Aging of wine is basically the accumulated chemical changes that happen over time. My take is that yes, wine actually ages faster in smaller quantities.
But for any wine other than real lightweights (DB, SP), bottling quickly is not a good answer. I proved to my own (dis)satisfaction that bottling quickly can produce inconsistent wines, e.g., a lot of bottle variation. Giving wine at least 4 months to go through the initial chemical changes is highly beneficial, and bulk aging heavier wines longer makes equal sense, as they have more changes to undergo.
Here's a good experiment -- bottle a wine in 375, 750, and 1500 ml bottles. At 3 month intervals, open one of each, decant the 750 and 1500 into clean 375 ml bottles so there are 3 identical bottles, label & bag 'em, and have someone else mix them up. Blind taste the wines in random order, recording notes. This would be interesting if done with a white, a lighter red, and a heavy red.
@Bmd2k1, this is a good thread!
.
