Most people believe that the
quality of a bottle of wine only improves as it ages. Is this this case? The
Ideal Wine Company asks; does wine really get better with age?
Wines don’t necessarily get better as they age
The Ideal Wine Company is here to
supply you with a variety of luxury wines at a price you can actually afford. We
have a number of older vintages on our product list. We even have wines that
date back to the 70’s such as the Chateau
Lafite Rothschild 1974. Does the age of such a vintage increase its
quality?
It depends. Wine doesn’t always
get better as it ages but it’s a little more complicated than that. The more superior
the bottle, the more likely it is to improve as it gets older. Therefore wines
that are produced and consumed locally won’t get better but higher end wines
from the supermarket and fine wines will improve as they age.
How to store your wine
Yet that isn’t the end of the
story. You can’t just purchase a fine wine and expect its quality to appreciate
as it ages. You need to store it correctly if you wish to improve its flavour,
as improper storage can have a detrimental effect on any wine.
To store a bottle of correctly so
that it has the best chance of improving as it ages you should:
· Keep it
cool: Heat is the enemy of good wine so you need to store your bottle in a
cool place like a cellar if you wish to protect its quality.
· Keep it
still: Experts believe that if you shake a bottle of wine it could damage
its quality by speeding up some of the chemical reactions in the liquid. Keep a
steady hand when placing your wine into storage.
· Keep it
sideways: Tradition dictates that wine needs to be stored sideways. This is
so the liquid wets the cork and prevents it from drying out. Most fine wines
are corked so if you want to improve the quality of a fine wine as it ages,
ensure you store it sideways.
· Keep it
closed: It’s like the genie and the bottle. Once you open a bottle of wine
there’s no closing it. Opening a bottle of wine is the quickest way to render
it undrinkable in the long-term.
Store your fine wine properly
Therefore some wines do get
better with age but others don’t. Fine wines like the ones available here from
the Ideal Wine Company are the vintages that are most likely to appreciate as
they get older, as long as you store them properly.
