Tim Atkin’s guide to buying and storing wine: Why lay wine down?

Tim Atkin is an award-winning wine writer and Master of Wine with 35 years’ experience. He writes for a number of publications, including Harpers, Decanter, The World of Fine Wine, Gourmet Traveller Wine and The Drinks Business and is one of the Three Wine Men. Tim is a co-chairman of the International Wine Challenge, the world’s most rigorously judged blind tasting competition, and has won over 30 awards for his journalism and photography. So far, he don’t have a red nose to show for it…….

‘Every year or two, I send him the same letter,’ an exasperated wine merchant confessed to me recently. ‘This guy has been storing a case of Muscadet with us since the late 1980s and paying an annual charge for the privilege. Every time I write to tell him that it really is time to drink the stuff, I get the same response: “Leave it where it is”.’

Not many of us would put our faith in the ageing powers of a 20-year-old Muscadet. Fresh light whites, even those with marked levels of acidity, rarely improve with time in bottle. But that ancient case of Loire white raises broader questions about laying down wine.

Why do it in the first place? Which wines age best? How and where should you store it? And how do you know when a wine has reached maturity?

The first thing to bear in mind is that most wine is intended to be drunk on release. Even red Bordeaux, the ultimate cellar-worthy wine, has become much more drinkable in its youth since the early 1980s, with plusher tannins, more oak and alcohol and lower levels of acidity. Attribute it to climate change, to later picking dates or to new-fangled machinery in the winery, or even to a combination of all three, but these days we really can have our cake and scoff it. In the past, many of the best red Bordeaux were undrinkable in their youth; now they are accessible within a few years of the harvest.