The Significance of Age
Our relationship with age says something about how we value time, and it plays a decisive role in the world of wine. But are we in the process of losing that connection?
When it comes to wine, age is a crucial dimension of our relationship with it. The vintage itself matters because it tells us something about the weather that year, but a wine’s aging potential carries even greater significance. It directly influences how much value we assign to the wine.
The traditional equation is: The greater the quality, the greater the aging potential.
We quite simply judge the wine by how old it can become. How well it endures and is cared for in the cellar through decades until the right moment arrives. Only then do we open it and enjoy its depth, while reflecting on the year it came from — seeing life in a broader perspective.
A wine of that caliber gives us a sense of weight and wisdom, and perhaps even gratitude for being able to enjoy a piece of nature in such a refined form. There is something poetically elegant about it that connects us to the larger whole of which we are only a small part.
At the same time, we celebrate winemakers whose families go back generations, and thus the know-how that has been passed down. It matters to us that great winemaking ability is built over a long time and did not simply appear overnight.
In other words, we honor age in the world of wine. Which is why it may seem surprising that our behavior is the exact opposite when it comes to…
