There has been some discussion on this on a few other threads, but perhaps it deserves a thread to get a response from a wider audience.

I often see, "best by 2009" "drink before 2007"
"drink NOW" etc.

Great info. I'm just curious how that rangeis determined and more importantly, what I might due to better develop my taste to identify a wine that is a 20 year wine, versus a 5 year wine.

Texas, here's my opinion....

With these ratings, the critics are often quite familiar with both the producer, and similar wines from the region. After drinking that specific wine and others like it over the years, they start to understand just how those wines age. Furthermore, they start to see which wines age longer than others based upon vintage or preliminary tasting characteristics. It's all experience.

It's not a formula.

You can do the same thing. Develop vertical collections of wines that are considered 'benchmarks' for the region. Also, buy a case of that wine and drink each vintage every year or so. You'll be able to tell from release the aging potential of the wine.

-Vitis Vinifera in Lodi

I use anecdotal pseudoscience, but year 10 into drinking wines, I have found:

-Cabernets and other reds with weak mid palates do not hold up well regardless of fruit content. Some early drinking wines are quite pleasureable for a short period of time. California reds are often quite fruity and delicious for months after release while many Bordeaux are not. 10-15 years later, the complexity of Bordeaux is far more interesting.
-Wines with high acid or alcohol last longer, but not necessarily better. Wines that develop well often need big fruit and tannin, and reasonable acid to last until they integrate smoothly.
-Wines with high tannin need that big fruit to balance; especially for Pinots which do not develop well if they are on the wrong end of the battle to start with.
-Pinot Noir remains the hardest(for me) to judge, because the balance is tenuous and seems often to go in the wrong direction too soon, at least for those I have afforded.
-Syrah and Petite Syrah change the least and often last the longest. I've had several from the 70's that I thought were 90's harvests.
-Zins mollify rather quickly and should be drunk in 4-6 years, expect Ridge's which are blended with Petite Syrah etc.and can last well to a decade.

Just one man's opinions.

DrT

Dr. T's post is very good, and fills a big void in what I had to say.

Yes, you don't have to have drank that same wine for ten years before you can start to judge it's aging potential at its outset. But even this ability takes some experience, as you look for certain things.

When I judge a red wine for aging potential, maybe another way to think of it is 'has this wine started to develop secondary bottle age characteristics'. This seems vague, and my next few things are more so. Some wines seem tightly wound, and while it may be apparent that it is ripe, extracted, tannic, acidic, etc, perhaps on the nose and palate those complexities haven't really evolved into layering or better definition. To me they may seem (by they I mean for example a 2001 Cabernet or Syrah from California) to just not be offering much on the nose, on the palate the tannins are coarse and monolithic. But the potential....by judging the sheer concentration of tannins, alcohol, extraction, and acidity.....

Hope this makes any sense. Dr. T said it better, using more specific examples. I think this is one of those topics better demonstrated than described. Big tastings of many young, big name reds like the Family Winemakers of California on the 13th is a great chance to see this in action.

-Vitis Vinifera in Lodi