Aging Pinot Noir

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Mark Middlebrook and I'm here in the Paul Marcus Wine Cellar, and I'm going to talk in this segment a little bit about aging Pinot Noir. Pinot Noir is a great variety that if grown and made correctly can certainly age for quite a while, although maybe not as long as the longest aging example, say of Cabernet Sovereigno, or Nebbiolo, great varieties that lend a little more tannin and structure to the wine. Whether you would want to age a particular Pinot Noir or not, really depends on the specific bottling and the vintage and producer and all those things of course. If it's a regular Bourgogne just a regional Pinot Noir from Burgundy and France, it's generally a wine you want to drink within, you know the first 5 years of its life, there's certainly exceptions, but most of these are intended to be consumed fairly young in their lives, a good one will get a little bit more complex in a few years, but it's not going to go forever and ever. As you move up to quality scale in Burgundy, to village wine and Premi Cru wines, such as this, and Gran Cru wine, you get increasing age-ability and increasing desire to age them because they tend to taste better as they take on some years. So this is a 1996 Gevrey Chambertin Premi Cru of one of the better vineyards in Burgundy. I find Premi Crus, depending on the vintage and the producer and so on, start to taste really interesting in 5 to 7 years after vintage dating, and a good vintage they can easily go much longer than that, 10-15 years, maybe longer. Gran Cru wines, I don't have one here, but those you might not want to even touch them generally before 10 years after vintage date, and a good vintage they'll go well, well longer than that. Same general rules are going to apply to well made California, Oregon, New Zealand Pinot Noir, although there's a lot less history with those wines. In my view they repay certainly a few years of bottle aging if you have the time, the patience and the cool dry place with a relatively constant temperature. So as you're enjoying your Pinot Noir, and you find one that you particularly like, that has the right stuff about it, put a little bit of it aside and bring it out in the future years and see how it evolves."