Wine is only one step on the path from grape juice to vinegar. Some wines let us walk that path slowly with them, stopping to smell the roses.

Everyone has heard of wine’s magical ability to improve with time, but for most people this causes more questions than answers. In this article, I’m going to give clear and helpful guidance through a series of yes or no questions. These tools will help you learn which wines are worth aging and lead you down the rabbit hole that is aging wine.

I’m writing this to help the myriad of people that ask about this on social media. In lieu of typing the same answer multiple times, I plan to simply link this article. If you are here because of one such link, welcome!

I hope this helps. It is for you.

What Do We Mean When We Say “A Wine Can Age?”

When we age wine we are looking for a situation where: 10+ years from Vintage date, under proper cellar conditions, the wine will be more interesting, more complex, more nuanced, and overall more enjoyable than when it was released.

We aren’t looking for a wine that persists, but one that improves. There is no reason to spend the effort of aging a wine if you aren’t going to get more a more compelling experience.

What are “Proper Cellar Conditions?”

• A constant temperature of 48-59 F

• A constant humidity between 55-75%

• Darkness, quiet, and lack of vibrations

• All bottles stored on their side and very infrequently moved.

Two Important Caveats:

• 99% of wines do not improve with age. Please start from an assumption that the wine in front of you won’t improve with age. This includes almost all of America’s most popular wines and probably most of your favorites. This isn’t a condemnation of those wines. Many of them are amazing. Not every wine was meant to age. If we age the wrong wines, we end up with nothing more than expensive vinegar.

• The questions below are helpful simplifications and there are going to be rare exceptions. However, if you follow my test almost all people with have success almost all the time.

The Questions and How to Use Them:

As you read the questions below - and answer them about your wine - keep track of how many questions are answered with “Yes.” The more “Yes” answers your wine receives, the more likely it is to be ‘age-worthy.” If the answer isn’t ‘definitely yes,’ it is “no.”

Some of the questions are contradictory, so it is impossible for your wine to get a yes answer for all of them. That’s okay.

Is This Wine a Sweet Dessert Wine?

I’m specifically thinking about Vintage Porto, Sherry, Sauternes (France), Trockenbeerenauslese, Beerenauslese, Eiswein, Ice Wine, Jurançon, Sélection de Grains Nobles (SGN), and more.

If the wine is one of these glorious dessert wines, you can stop answer questions right here.

These dessert wines age nearly indefinitely and no one alive could reasonably expect to outlive them.

Is This Wine a Dry Red Wine?

The vast majority of age worthy wines are dry reds.

Is This Wine a Riesling from Germany or Austria?

This is the exception to the dry red wine thing. Riesling wines tend to be age worthy.

Was This Wine Made in Europe?

Give an extra point if it was made in France, Italy, or Spain.

I’m not criticizing wine from the United States, Australia, or elsewhere with this. Some wonderful wines are made in those countries. It’s just that our culture tends to not age wines and our country’s wines tend to be optimized to our culture.

Is the Price of This Wine above $65?

It isn’t that wines meant for aging cost more. It is that inexpensive wines are almost never made to be aged.

Was This Wine Made in Bordeaux, France?

No wine producing region in the world produces a higher percentage (or quantity) of age worthy wines.

Does Cabernet Sauvignon Make up 75% or More of This Wine?

Cabernet Sauvignon is incredibly age worthy. Especially at higher prices and from the premier regions.

Is the Listed Alcohol Percentage Between 12.5% and 14.5%?

While not always the case, wines outside of this alcohol range tend to have less balance and balance is important for age worthiness.

Did You Buy This Wine from an Independent or Specialty Wine Merchant?

Again, it isn’t that Independent wine merchants feature age worthy wine. It’s that large box stores or grocers tend to work with the largest wine companies and those companies tend to make wine for near term consumption.

A Few Slightly More Advanced Questions:

You should probably have enough tools to analyze the age worthiness of any wine you come across at this point. However, if you’d like to drill a bit deeper into this question here are a few additional questions to refine your decision. They require a bit more wine experience compared to the previous questions.

If You’ve Tasted the Wine, Did It Taste Firm, Hard, and “Tight?”

You should probably not age a wine that you consider smooth, luscious, delicate, creamy, mellow, soft, or “not too dry.” As an athlete must stretch before an event, great age worthy wines are often tight if you open them too young.

Was the Wine Made in Hermitage, Cote-Rotie, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Barolo, Barbaresco, Chianti Classico, Rioja, or Priorat?

If your wine has met lots of the other criteria and is from one of these regions, the likelihood of age worthiness significantly increases.

Did the Wine Come from a Great Vintage?

While great vintages do not make wines age worthy, age worthy wines tend to be even more so in great vintages.

For example: a great Bordeaux in an ‘off-year’ might age well for 10 years, but in a great year it might age 30+ years.

In Conclusion:

I hope that what I’ve written here will be a good tool for you to use in your own wine journey. We need more people who are interested in the journey of pleasure and discovery that comes from aging wine. They just need to know which wines to age. This should help you get started.