Wine Asylum

Posted by jimbill (A) on December 18, 2008 at 17:08:14

In Reply to: RE: My Yellowtail Shiraz is going bad -- It's only a 2004 posted by Cut-Throat on December 17, 2008 at 15:03:52

Wines like Yellowtail are meant to be quaffed within a year or two of release. No tannins and very ripe fruit. They aren't meant to be aged because the fruit is already fully accessible.

The problem with fully ripe fruit and no acidity is that they start to turn to prune juice after a couple of years.

By the way, this isn't only for expensive wine. Poor years of first growths, inferior years of Burgundy, and lesser years of California's best trophy wines can do the same thing. I've had a number of wines usually served at special occassions where the owner has been saving it for that special time. The wine served was brick colored around the edge and flat with no fruit or complexity. Down the drain.

If you're going to save wines for more than 4-5 years you should do some research and see if they will improve with age. You don't have to subscribe to Wine Spectator or such. Email the winery for their opionion.

As for proper temperature, I have reservations on that. I had a few bottles of well picked wines from when I worked at a good wine store. When I went to college I left them with my parents. When I came home on vacation I found them on top of the refrigerator while my Mother cooked Christmas dinner, at least 90 degrees in the kitchen. They had also been through a Texas summer or two. Fast forward three years to when I opened one of them in 1984 ('70 Cos) to celebrate the birth of my first child. It was incredible. The others were just as wonderful.