As I was approaching my Big 5-0, I visited Argentina, hosted by a famous figure in the world of wine. At dinner one night, my host’s wife told me that her husband’s 70th birthday was just around the corner. I declared that I was also about to reach a major milestone, and she enquired if I was going to be 70, too. I consoled myself with the thought that the restaurant was absurdly dark. Adding insult to injury, on a visit to the cellars of Marqués de Riscal in Rioja with two fellow journalists, our hosts brought out 1964, the birth year of one of us, and 1961, the birth year of another. The next wine, whose neck required hot tongs, was 1928. Cue much amusement at my expense as I insisted, through gritted teeth, that no, I was not 82 years old.
Anniversary and birthday milestones should be celebrated with special bottles worthy of the occasion, but if the process of our own aging is often so difficult to ascertain, the same applies, all the more so, to wine. It’s all very well what Shakespeare wrote of Cleopatra – that ‘age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety’ – but no wine is fixed in timeless suspension. The complex processes at work in a bottle of wine make subtle changes over time, destroying the lesser and bringing welcome, new yet lived-in features to those with the magic ability to age well. How can we tell, if we want to give a special gift to commemorate a birthday or anniversary, that we’re giving a wine that has not just survived but prospered?
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