Tweaking for aging

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kyle5434

Trying to fuse frugal/pragmatic with good results
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As someone who leans towards the introversion side of the scale on the Myers-Briggs profile, I tend to engage in a fair amount of ruminating and conjecture - sometimes more than I probably should.

One item that's been running around my brain of late concerns the subject of a wine's aging potential. I've seen the charts outlining which varieties of grapes tend to have the best innate potential for aging. I've also read that the primary components that figure into that potential are acidity (higher acidity/lower pH is better) and structural elements such as tannins (higher is generally better).

It got me thinking...could one theoretically tweak a wine to improve its shelf life? For example, if one came across a great deal on a kit (such as the Master Vintner Cherie Merlot kits that were being cleared out early this year), and wanted to pick up 2-3 kits but didn't want to have a glut of the same wine all ready to drink within the same window 2-3 years down the road, could increasing the acidity a bit and adding some additional tannins to one or two of the kits move out the "prime enjoyment" window of the wines from those kits by a year or two?

I realize that such tweaking might change the overall character of those wines from their original recipe. I'm just wondering if one could still end up with an enjoyable, even if not perfectly identical, product by employing such a strategy.

Thoughts?
 
I am not sure that acid profile would need to change but additional tannin would definitely change the aging
profile. different levels of tannin added post fermentation should give different aging times.
 

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