Walls: The importance of drinking windows over scores

When choosing a wine, consulting tasting notes can offer some valuable insight. We can all be guilty of just scanning for scores, but when picking a wine to drink now, there’s a more important number to look at – the ‘drink from’ date.

A question of pleasure

When I visited Jean-Louis Chave last October I was lucky enough to taste something very special: his 2020 Cuvée Cathelin. It’s a Hermitage bottling he makes only in the best years. I also tasted a mature vintage of his classic Hermitage, the 2001, a less vaunted year.

Which was better? No question – the 2020 Cuvée Cathelin. Which would I like to drink? That’s easy – the 2001 classic Hermitage.

Scroll down to see notes and scores (and drinking windows) for 10 wines that are ready to drink now

The Cuvée Cathelin was a beautiful combination of density and finesse. You could see its potential, but tasting the wine offered no hedonistic delight. Professionally it was fascinating, a valuable insight into the vintage, the place and the quality of the wine. But it didn’t offer any pleasure – not yet.

It might come from an inferior vintage, but the 2001 Hermitage was aromatically explosive, texturally harmonious and still fresh. It had taken on all the unmistakable gamey, smoky markers of an authentic Hermitage, with layers of thrilling complexity. It was just a mouthful in a dark cellar, but it was a moment of sheer pleasure – because the wine was open and ready to drink.

Inconvenient truths

‘Sauvignon Blanc with steak? It’s not wrong if you like it!’ the populists proclaim. Just as they say that there’s no wrong time to drink a bottle of wine. Demystifying wine is a noble aim, but oversimplification doesn’t help anyone.

It’s undeniable that all wines have a lifespan – whether it’s two, 20 or 200 years. And different types of wine simply taste better at certain periods rather than others. Just as it’s true that steak goes better with Syrah.

Some wines famously improve with age. This confers on them a certain lustre; but it can be commercially frustrating. Take vintage Port, the best of which can evolve for a century or more. The problem for Port makers is that wine lovers know how well it ages, so have no hurry to drink it – and with cases lying deep in their cellars, there’s little incentive to buy more. Perhaps that’s why I recently saw a Port producer declare that young vintage Port goes well with steak. I’ll stick to the Syrah.

Drinking a wine too young is like watching the rehearsal of a play rather than waiting for the show to open. It might make for an enjoyable evening, and you can tell if it will make for a good production or not. But given the choice, it’s still worth waiting for the finished thing.

If not now, when?

Knowing when to pull the cork isn’t always obvious. Some red wines, like top Bordeaux, are built for the long-haul, padded out with sustaining tannins that will have slimmed down by the time its flavours have evolved. Others, like great Châteauneuf-du-Pape, entice with a youthful deliciousness from the start.

The arc of a wine’s maturity isn’t always smooth or linear. Like Châteauneuf, many wines have an early peak, a couple of years after bottling, when they’re exuberant and vital. Then they will go through a more muted stage before opening up again with a more complex, earthy, mineral manifestation. Syrah is notorious for going through these closed periods; I’ve often wished I could give wines two drinking windows rather than one.

But it’s the second phase, or when the wine is fully mature, where we’re rewarded with a wine’s fullest expression. Harmony and complexity principally, but, as Jean-Paul Jamet often says, terroir expression – a wine’s uniqueness – sometimes only reveals itself with time.

Until we get a feel for the circadian rhythms of each style, the best way to know when to broach a bottle is to check the all-important numbers at the end of each tasting note – the drinking window.

Ready is better than great

When reading restaurant wine lists, I used to simply focus on wines I know to be excellent. But I’ve changed my strategy. Now I scan for wines I know will be open and ready. Because in this scenario, I want to prioritise pleasure.

I don’t want to have to wait for the wine to show up, peering into the bottle trying to coax it out. Pick the wrong moment and tasting wine – even the greatest wines – can be a struggle. Get it right, and the wine jumps enthusiastically out of your glass.

If the wine is moody, you can always try decanting it. In my experience however, it rarely makes much difference. It might help young wines to open up, or to blow away the cobwebs of older ones. But you can’t accelerate maturity with aeration.

When reading a tasting note, too many of us concentrate solely on the score. But if you’re looking for a bottle to drink now, the drinking window is arguably more important. After all, a good wine that’s ready to drink is preferable to a great one that isn’t.

Ten top wines ready to drink now:

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