Starting a wine cellar: Wines to lay down for your grandchildren

Date: October 15, 2010

Wine lovers enjoy the idea of laying wines away for a long time. The thought of pulling out a dusty bottle thick with cobwebs that has slumbered for twenty years in a dark corner of the cellar is very appealing. But too often the moment of truth turns out to be a monumental disappointment when the stuff tastes awful.

Very few wines will last twenty years because of the way they are produced. Even if they were made for long ageing, they could be destroyed by bad cellaring.

If you want to stash a few bottles away for little Johnny’s twenty-first birthday or a future wedding anniversary, tuck them away in the coolest, most remote corner of your cellar (nearest the floor). Keep in mind that the larger the format, the longer the wine will live. Magnums are the best size container for allowing the product to mature slowly.

In the longevity stakes, the following wines from the best vintage years have an established track record for surviving two decades.

Fortified

1. Vintage port
2. Vintage Madeira (especially Malmsey and Terrantez)
3. Australian liqueur Muscat
4. Marsala

Red

1. Château-bottled red Bordeaux (classified growths)
2. Single domaine Grand Crus Burgundies
3. Hermitage, Côte Rôtie (Rhône)
4. Recioto delta Valpolicella
5. Barolo Riserva
6. Certain Rioja Gran Reserva reds (Marques de Murrieta, Muga, Lopez de Heredia)
7. Some Portuguese garrafeiras
8. Château Musar (Lebanon)
9. Vega Sicilia (Spain)
10. Barca Velha (Portugal)
11. Grange Hermitage (Australia)

White

1. Tokay Essencia (Hungary)
2. Château-bottled Sauternes
3. Top white single domaine Burgundies
4. Single vineyard Vouvray
5. Riesling Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese
6. Riesling Icewine/Eiswein
7. Marques de Murrieta Ygay Blanco (Rioja)
8. Jura vin de paille
9. Vin Jaune (Château-Châlon)

Wines NOT to lay down for the long haul

1. Champagne and sparkling wine
2. Sherry
3. Spirits (they only improve in the wood)
4. Most dry white wines
5. Beaujolais, Valpolicella and other simple reds
6. Fantasy blends
7. Rosé wines
8. Most half bottles (they mature much faster than 750 mL bottles)
9. Wines without a vintage date

It should be noted that wines do not necessarily age at the same rate, especially when they get older. Even if you have a case of the same wine you may find a difference in maturity after several years of cellaring. A good analogy would be picking a bunch of roses and placing them in a vase. They will not all open up at the same rate and when in full bloom some will hold their petals longer than others.

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