Wine Ageism: Tasting Older Vintages

This video above has been one of the most interesting posts Gary Vaynerchuk has made on WinelibraryTV as of late for a number of reasons.  First, I like it when Gary steps outside his regular routine of reviewing wines, for while I respect his reviews I much more enjoy his take on the wine world in general and the educational bonuses that can be gleaned from watching his program.  Secondly, this video is awesome as it features some of the rock stars of the wine industry.  (Robert Parker is exactly how I pictured him: a big head with big hair).  Thirdly, this video was interesting to me in light of what I experienced today at the Louis Martini Tasting Room in St. Helena.

At the end of the clip Vaynerchuk, Parker and the rest of the tasters at the Master Wine Tasting Future in Rioja, end up tasting a 1945 Marques de Riscal Rioja.  Gary describes the wine as smelling of "petrol, gasoline, and funkified poop".  The wine is obviously extremely old, but its hard to tell from the video whether the wine is passed it's prime, as there are also descriptions of the wine as having firm tannins, bright fruit, and scoring like a 91-92 point wine.

This video highlights my confusion and interest in the concept of older vintage wines and their actual value.  As someone who sells wine everyday - many bottles of which are decades old - I find myself caught in the quagmire over whether or not these bottles are actually any good to drink.  There are so many factors that can contribute to the aging of a bottle of wine, both good and bad.  And in a world where everyone's sense of taste and smell are totally relative, its even more difficult to ascertain the value of a bottle that's older than myself, especially in tasting it.

A great example of this pickle occurred today at the Christmas bottle signing with Mike Martini.   A guest was visiting us from Tiburon and had come in to try some of the older vintages of our Los Ninos wines, Bordeaux style blends from our Monte Rosso vineyard that are meant to be purchased by parents the year they have kids and saved until their 21st birthday.

This guest had daughters born in 1994 and 1996 respectively, so Mike opened a bottle of each to taste.  Now the saying is that wine gets better with age, yet my experience so far has led me to believe that this is completely relative.  Depending on where the bottle was made, when it was made, how it was made, and how it was stored, we could be tasting something really special, or something totally nasty.

So imagine my excitement then when Mike and the guest began gushing about the wines!  I poured myself a taste of each only to have my world come crashing down.  These wine smelled bad and tasted bad too.  Like nail polish mixed with metal, gasoline and sour rotten fruit.  I immediately was filled with questions.  Could Mike just have been humoring the guest who couldn't tell these wines were turned?
Could this all just be a matter of acquired taste?  Is this what really good wine is supposed to taste like?

My educational journey in wine so far has been filled with lots of unanswerable questions like this, as you really can't know the answer to a wine question until you've tasted a wine that answers it for you.  As my mind was reeling with these ideas and I was wondering what to say, Mike actually gave me an answer.  In order to compare and contrast these wines against an even older vintage, Mike went and grabbed the inaugural 1979 Los Ninos to taste against the 90s vintages.  At first, the experience was the same, metallic brackishness mixed with sour fruit and maderized sherry.  But then we grabbed the Decantus Areator.  After pouring another tasting through this naturally decanting device I perceived a whole new level to the wine.  The funkiness was still there, as well as the sour metallic taste, but now the wine was brighter, and there was a definite increase in the amount of "fruitiness".  And as we went back and forth to the 94 and 96, there was a definite difference in how those wine tasted as well.

Mike described this change as a "blowing off" of the negative bottle bouquet that can arise during the aging process, and it was a really enlightening experience.  I realized that the key to enjoying a great bottle of wine is patience, patience that is required in holding onto a bottle of wine long enough to let it age, and patience upon opening to allow the wine to shine forth its true potential.  Most wines today are made for the exact opposite experience, and can be enjoyed immediately upon popping the cork.  I simply realized that my whole palate and tasting perception has been built upon these types of wines approachable, yet still very good, younger wines.  While wines do definitely have a shelf life, I simply haven't been tasting enough of them that were meant to go the distance.    In the end it really is about acquired taste.  I didn't enjoy my first taste of Cabernet when i tried it, so I'm guessing its going to be a while before I can build up the patience to really enjoy an age-worthy wine.