Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder January 12 2017, 0 Comments
We at Taste love when customers take advantage of our tasting machines because while we do our best to make great recommendations to the folks who ask, we know that as individuals, we are all different and have unique preferences. As such, every once in a while, despite our best efforts, we probably recommend a bottle to someone that might miss the mark. And that stinks.
One such example is the 2003 Azelia Barolo that we carry, one of our delicious older wines. I'd guess that 95% of the people that purchased it based on our description loved it. But we did have a customer come back to the store and let us know that she hated it.
So who is right and who is wrong? Nobody...preference and taste is subjective, which is why you may have heard people say that "a good wine is any wine that you enjoy".
So why are we told that aged wine is better?
Wines that are made to age, and not all are, evolve with time. These wines are usually the full bodied reds that many people enjoy this time of year. When young, they tend to have big fruit flavors and big tannins. These are characteristics that some people love. As they age, though, the tannins drop out and the wine softens. And the big fruit that they displayed in their youth will often fade a bit, while secondary characteristics, such as earth, leather or tobacco come more to the forefront. The evolution and new flavors is what is meant by "complexity" in a wine.
We'll talk more about aged wine in future posts and if there is enough interest, we can hold an in-store wine tasting of older wines. Feel free to comment below or tweet at us @TasteWineCo if you have any thoughts, follow up questions or want to participate in a tasting of older wines.
