🏷️ Aging of wine

Wine ageing is the time wine matures in barrels, tanks or bottles before sale or after purchase. During this time taste, colour and smell change. The wine becomes softer and more complex, and sharp acids and tannins smooth out.

Ageing is done in different ways. In an oak barrel the wine picks up vanilla and spice notes and has slight contact with air. In old large casks, foudres, ageing is gentler and adds no oak flavour. In the bottle wine matures without air. There is biological ageing under a film of yeast, as in sherry, and oxidative ageing with access to air. Solera blends wines of different years. Micro-oxygenation feeds small doses of oxygen into the wine.

Not every wine should be aged. Light whites and rosés are best drunk young. Ageing suits powerful tannic reds, sweet wines with high acidity and some whites.

The term "ageing potential" means how many years a wine can keep improving. Ageing rules appear in the classifications of many countries, for example in Spain.