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I kind of asked this question either here or on Central before but will ask again more specifically.My favorite $7 red wine so far is Fetzer Syrah (2001). I emailed them about againg their wines and got no response. Do you think another year or two of age might improve this wine? Obviously it's not a great wine at that price, but good enough to have some real character. It doesn't say anything about aging on the bottle or on the web site. Some wines say to drink now, some say they age well and some say nothing at all.
Jeff
Follow Ups:
The short answer is don't bother. Wines like the one you mentioned aren't made to aged. Laying them down in a dark, cool place (with little temp fluctuation), with no vibration for a few months may allow the wine to stabilize and taste slightly better before you drink up. Wines worthy of ageing gain complexity and are made to be aged. It's kinda like audio equipment. I wish I could be totally satisfied with a Tivoli and cheap CD player. Would have been a hell of a lot less expensive. Same thing goes for wine. If it's inexpensive and you get pleasure from it, then it's the right wine for you.
Unless you can find a review in WS or by RP or Tanzer, you'll have to open up a bottle and taste it for yourself. While it is true that most inexpensive wines are meant to be consumed immediately, that is not a hard and fast rule. Wines meant to be aged are concintrated in flavor and very tannic, too tannic to be enjoyed now. It is principly to wait for the fading of tannins to reveal other flavors that we age wine for. If the wine tastes good now and/or is not overly tannic, it is probably meant to be consumed immediately. If it is very good meaning intensely flavored, cellaring it for a year or two won't usually hurt and can help. If it is not capable of aging and you do cellar it, you run the risk of having it fade to the point where whatever enjoyment is in it will be diminished or gone. Most people faced with this dilemma prefer to err on the side of drinking it too early rather than risk waiting until it is too late. There are no hard and fast rules. When a wine is ready to drink is strictly a matter of personal preference. Me, I like my ageworthy wines well aged before I drink them.
which i assume you are tuned into is that wine will get worse, not better, if you can't control the temperature and to a lesser extent humidity, for the aging period. so, lay it down in an area of the house that gets the least temp variation (not a sunny window or in the kitchen, eg) and see what happens. if nothing else, depending on when you bought it, it might get over some bottle shock. it was probably bottled in '03.
Jeff:My experience is that Syrah definitely gets better after a couple of years in the bottle, after its release date. This is true for the less expensive Syrahs I've had as well. I assume the Fetzer is from California grapes. If so, 2001 was a nice year and you should buy more if you can. You already know you like it, and I'm guessing that 2002 won't be as good - good chance of that anyway. The good news is that your 2001 bottles already have some age on them. Enjoy them now and save a number of them to drink in mid to late 2005. I'm guessing you'll notice a positive difference. I wouldn't save them much beyond that point however. It usually takes a more expensive wine to benefit from aging more than 3-4 years past vintage date.
Its hard to say whether this wine will improve over the next year, but at $7 its easy enough to put a few away and find out. I would doubt that a year will do much to the overall flavor, but if it seems bright or highly tannic to you, a year may make it a bit easier on the tongue. However, unless there’s something special going on in this wine, the differences will probably be subtle.Generally speaking, whether a wine improves with age is dependent on many things, but is most often determined by its "structure" - the balance acid, fruit, and tannins. As wines age each of these characteristics diminish, changing the flavor of the wine. Since the changes in each occur at different rates, there will be a certain point at which an optimum balance is achieved that makes the wine taste its best. Of course, many other things will also change within the wine over time that affect the taste, so a wine that reaches its optimum balance over 15 years will likely be more interesting than one that finds balance over 1 or 2 years. However, no guarantees can be made with respect to enjoyment, just variation :-).
Most inexpensive wines are meant to consume immediately, which means that more time in the bottle will not likely yield a better balance between fruit and tannins. However, since other things within the bottle may change as well, there's nothing to say that aging won't yield a better tasting wine. However, its pretty much impossible to predict these things, so best to drink up now and save the cellar space for wines that really do have potential.
While I know that wine by name, I have not had it. But I've found that most wines in that price range really are meant to be drunk upon release, and I doubt it will improve much with age. A year in the cellar certainly won't ruin it. Might be fun to take some tasting notes now, then compare them with a bottle you keep for a year -- perhaps there will be some softening of the tannins, maybe a bit of roundness to the edges.Enjoy!
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