Maturation
Ageing and maturation are issues on which no two wine enthusiasts always agree. Cape Wine Master Tim James takes a scholarly look at this subjective topic.
There's a story, which should be true, of a man about to buy a case of wine, when the vigneron (for it was in France) murmured that, "of course, you must mature it for at least 10 years". The man pushed the wine back: "In that case - no; you keep it, and sell it to me when it's ready!"
Little likelihood of that, of course: in the sacred name of cash-flow, most producers everywhere thrust their wines from the nest as soon as possible, often expressing regret that it will be drunk long before it has reached its full glory. We have few wine-merchants worthy enough of that name to do anything other than pass it along with similar haste. Most shamefully, the general run of restaurateurs do the same, generally pausing only long enough to work out their 150% mark-up. How are novice drinkers ever to learn the subtle, suave joys of a mature wine?
Few do learn, and most bottles are broached within a day or two of purchase - not inappropriately for the majority, but terribly wastefully for those which do, indeed, require patience if they are to come to full potential. But how much patience? When (if ever) will the harsh-seeming acidity recede, when (if ever) will that mouth-puckering tannin soften, producing that marvellous creation of time: a complex and harmonious wine to gladden the heart and the taste-buds?
Like many important questions, that concerning a wine's development is not easy to answer. A plausible estimate ideally demands experience with that particular wine, and knowledge of the conditions in vineyard and cellar which produced it (one reason why 'blind' assessments can lead to less reliable conclusions than bringing in knowledge as a judging tool). This is easier with wines like Bordeaux, where decades of minute observation and careful tasting have taught what may be expected of a wine - but even there, modern innovations in viniculture and winemaking have had their effect, and there are debates which only time will answer about how today's fruitier, softer, more alcoholic wines, made with less sulphur dioxide to preserve them, will age.
That caveat made, some general points can be ventured, although the chemistry of wine's development in bottle is incompletely understood. The general pattern for both reds and whites would begin with the aromas and flavours in a newly made wine dominated by the fresh 'primary' vibrancy coming immediately from the fruit. Most white wines and many reds are best drunk at this stage.
For others, benefit will come with the emergence of 'secondary' aromas, deriving from the fermentation process. But only a year in cask or bottle - or sometimes much longer - will see the early manifestation of 'tertiary' aromas, and the complexity and nuances brought about by the interaction of what has already been produced, together with influences from cellar practices such as malolactic fermentation, aeration through racking and maturation in oak, with new compounds forming in the still youthful fine wine. The wine no longer has a mere aroma: it has a 'bouquet' which, together with its associated flavours, can continue developing for - well, for just how long is the difficult bit.
Red and white wines, however, develop in different ways, largely because of the different ways in which they are made - reds being much higher in phenolics like tannin and the colour-producing anthocyanins, leeched out from grape skins and pips. A youthful red destined for long development will often be almost harsh with tannin; generally it will be deeply coloured, tinged with purple. Along its curve of development, reflecting complex changes in the wine as reactions take place with the small amount of oxygen absorbed during the pre-bottling processes, the colour will move towards a lighter brown-red, tannins become smoother, and the acidity frequently appears less marked.
At some point, bouquet and flavour become less intense, and the inexorable slide to decrepitude begins - to the point where only the tannic and acidic skeleton remains, and the rich delights of the fruit are a matter only of poignant regret to the person who has withheld the corkscrew too long.
In white wines, although phenolics are also significant, acid seems to play as vital a role in ageability as tannins do in reds. The longest-lived whites (primarily cool-climate Riesling and Chenin Blanc, and botrytis-influenced sweet wines) in fact generally outlast any red, provided the acidity is high and balanced by an intensity of fruit. Their colour will gradually deepen and brown.
The development of a wine is best represented by a curve: rising to a peak of potential then declining into senility. The shape and length of the curve is the crucial thing: how long and gradual the rise, how long it will stay on a high plateau, and how precipitous the fall. It seems to be an approximate rule that the period of decline is similar to that of the maturing phase. For most wines the curve is steep: a modest local Colombard would be typical - at its best some six months after bottling, with little left after a year.
The trick (the inevitably fallible trick) is to predict the curve and, leaving aside storage conditions, it is basically a question of the winemaking practices and, above all, the quality of fruit. Grape variety is significant - Cabernet Sauvignon and Riesling, for example, have the inherent potential to long outlive Ruby Cabernet and Sauvignon Blanc, and even the finest Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Poorly grown, high-cropped Cabernet, though, made with concern only for immediate drinkability can also be a short-lived thing.
While components like acidity and phenolics are measurable, a less frequently commented on requirement for a wine's long life is balance: youthful awkwardness and lack of integration of the components is to be expected, but a balance between them seems to be vital for ensuring longer-term development. It is primarily this which must put a question mark against the future of, for example, the recent wave of fashionable blockbusters with massive alcohol levels.
The quality of the vintage is always relevant. It has become clearer over the last half-decade that Cape vintages are more variable than was sometimes thought: white wines from 2001 seem, for instance, to be generally superior to those of 2000, and the range of vintage character for red wine has been remarkably wide.
This was well illustrated for me in a recent vertical tasting of one of the Cape's foremost candidates for ageing - Cordoba Crescendo. The Cape's poorest vintage for a long time, 1996, produced a wine that is now approximately mature: it has a definite mahogany rim to its red, while the 1995 and 1997 show much less colour development; tannins are softer in the '96 than the '95, acidity less marked. The vintage pattern accords with that apparent in many other fine Cape reds: the 1997 has great finesse and the balance of its components promises a long future; the hot year of 1998 produced a wine of power and immediate impressiveness, with a deep colour and a big tannin and acid structure, while the 1999 is perhaps somewhat lesser in overall structure. In the younger wines the wood still dominates, almost masking the fruit - while the '95 and '96 show that time will absorb the flavours of wood into a greater complexity. Two points emerge from this specific example: firstly, if you have already drunk your 1995 Crescendo, you have wasted an investment in enhanced future pleasure; secondly, we cannot be sure what will happen in the future, because we have no established track record for this wine. Its maker, Christopher Keet, anticipates much interest in seeing how the very different 1995 and 1997 develop over the next decade.
There are few Cape wines, in fact, whose longer-term development we can speak about with real confidence, because of the lack of a track record. Even wines like Kanonkop Paul Sauer, our most obvious candidate for "First Growth" status, are no longer made in quite the same way they were in the early 1980s, or even, necessarily from the same vineyard stock; and plausible new contenders like Vergelegen have not yet demonstrated their capacity to develop - although the signs are there that such wines should not reach their peak for some 5 to 10 years at least.
It must be pointed out that 'development' is not the same as the simple ability to 'keep' for many years. Some wines (like, unfortunately, some people) grow old without discernibly maturing in a positive sense. There are those who claim that few, if any Cape wines will do much more than get older - or, that while they might mellow, they do not develop the sort of complexity associated most famously with old Bordeaux. This denial of benefit seems unduly pessimistic, however.
Two aspects further complicate an answer to the question "When should I open this bottle?", relating less to the wine than to its anxious possessor. First, storage of the wine from the moment it comes off the bottling line is important. Crucially, if kept at fluctuating or high temperatures, development will be much more rapid and less satisfactory. A chilly 13-15OC would be ideal, anything much above 25OC could damage the wine. But this is of most significance for ageing over a decade or more, and should not deter those (most of us!) who do not have ideal storage conditions - finding the most stably cool place available, and laying down some wine for a few years or more will still bring substantial rewards with many wines, especially with the more robust reds.
Secondly, there is the matter of preference. While most people will agree that it is better to drink a wine on its way up than once it has begun its decline, there is inevitable disagreement about when is 'best': the French and Italians traditionally prefer their wine much younger than do the English (accusing each other variously of necrophilia and infanticide, of course). There is undoubtedly an international fashion now for very young, soft and fruity wines - but whether this merely reflects the inexperience of the large wave of new wine-drinkers is debatable.
Most local professionals would probably reckon on four to eight years of bottle maturation as the ideal for most of the better Cape reds, particularly Cabernets (with some going further), before an attenuation of flavour sets in, uncompensated for by a corresponding gain in complexity. For dry or dryish white wines, it is clear that there are a few Chardonnays (Bouchard Finlayson, Hamilton Russell provenly among them) and Rieslings (Klein Constantia being one example) which generally benefit from the sort of ageing accorded good reds. Many others (including some Chenins, but rarely Sauvignon Blanc) deserve at least a year or two before being threatened with a corkscrew.
The goal of many ambitious winemakers is to make wines that are delicious when young, while still rewarding patient maturation. Of course, back-label hype declares that this goal is always achieved; and at least sometimes it probably is. But only time will tell us whether modern soft and fruity show-winners (Veenwouden, Rustenberg, De Toren, etc.) will reveal characterful complexity in a decade. There are Cape wines from the early 1980s - some Rustenbergs, Delheims, Welgemeends, for example - which still offer the pleasure, admittedly sometimes ethereal, which only the miracle of time's transformation can effect. One hopes that the new stars will offer at least the same in 2020.
