How long do I keep a wine before drinking?
This is a bit like the ‘piece of string’ question, but there are useful rules of thumb. Most wine throughout the world is drunk ‘young’, ie in the first two years of its life, and usually that’s the best time to drink them. White wine especially is fresher and fruitier the younger it is. Quite a few red wines will benefit from some ageing and some will benefit from a lot of ageing. Wines which are made expressly for further ageing, for example classed growth Burgundy and Bordeaux, generally (and this is a real generalisation) can reach drinkability in 5 to 6 years after vintage, although this depends very much on the vintage conditions when the wine was made. For example, some 2003 Bordeaux is already drinking well, as the Summer was so hot in 03 that the fruit went into bottle pretty ripe already.