burgster wrote: The other point that I often ponder is this whole concept of a product that has to be stored for 10-15 years before you can actually use it.
I don't think this is true at all. It is almost never claimed by any winery that a consumer NOT drink a wine upon purchase. They do suggest a time frame whereby the wine may improve, and on the back label it is almost always an underestimate because they fear that the buyer may not be able to store it properly. Wines do change with time in bottle and some people like this evolution. Young wines can be fun to drink, they are full of fresh vitality and young fruit. Some wines also have a firm structure and plenty of tannins, and these take time to ameliorate. It is your choice whether you want to drink them young or old.
burgster wrote:Imagine buying a new car and having to park it in the garage for many years until you can use it. Perhaps getting it out at ten years of age and driving it around the block to see if it is working ok yet.
Your analogy of the new car is not quite right. If you want to make an analogy between a new car and wine then in reality there are two parts.
First, it is a product. When you buy a new car you know what brand it is, and that it will run, though you may not know how reliable or durable it will be in the long run. It is similar with the wine, when you buy it you know the producer and label, and you know what food you should drink it with but you may not know whether it will be a good match or whether you will like it.
Second, that of preserving it. If you don't open your bottle of wine you may not know how it was but it will become a rarity and increase in value. With your car, the same holds true, you will never know if it was a reliable or durable car but it too will be pristine and valuable to an automobile collector.
burgster wrote:In many ways its a very cunning marketing ploy pushed on us by the wine industry. Open a wine too young and its your fault for not being patient enough, leave it too long and you should have drunk it a few years earlier when it peaked after 13.5 years in the bottle. Very cunning if you ask me, and what other industry could get away with it?
If the cellaring of wine is an industry ploy then it has failed miserably in Australia. From all I've read the wine industry has always reported that about 95% of all wines purchased in Australia is consumed within 24 hours (or is it 48?).
Each wine has an evolution of their own. First, they drink well when young as most people realize when they taste them at cellar door. As they age they enter a "dumb" phase where the primary fruit fades but the mature quality has yet to show, they appear closed and dull. As the tertiary character appears they enter their plateau, their drinking window if you will. This will last for some time before it starts to go downhill. Robert Parker once wrote about Bordeaux saying that if a particular red wine took 10 years to reach it's plateau, it would remain there for a further 10 before taking a another 10 to decline. I suspect that this formula may well apply to other wines in some way, shape or form, depending on the grape type and structure. For some wines it's 2-2-2 and for others it's 20-20-20.
Those who collect wines do so because they like older wines, they like the tertiary character, the mature flavours, and the mellow tannins. Then there are other who do it because it appears the done thing and having a cellar is more a matter of prestige.
Just my two cents.................................Mahmoud.