A common belief among casual wine drinkers is that age improves any wine. Wine store employees and wine critics reinforce this by writing "drinks well now, or for the next five years."
In reality, most wine doesn't benefit from time in the bottle. Some wine matures and becomes something better; most wine changes for the worse.
But I was still surprised at how far south our bottle of the 2001 Jamek "Ried Achleiten" Grüner Veltliner Smaragd had gone. Instead of this Austrian grape's bracing acidity and telltale white pepper aromas, the deep gold wine smelled of cheese with a little lanolin, some corn, and the merest hints of tropical fruit. The wine was almost watery and offered a mellow acidity. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't what I wanted from a bottle of Grüner.
I blame the storage conditions in our apartment. We store about half our wine at Subterraneum, but at home we don't have a wine refrigerator, largely because I feel the building would blow up if we plugged one into the wall: Melissa can't run her electric kettle unless we turn off all the lights. So I don't have high hopes for our second bottle, which is too bad. It's a good wine in its youth, and it should still be okay a mere four to five years later.
Remember, kids: Drink early and drink often.
