audreyh1
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
The need to age wine totally depends on the winery and regional tradition. Some wines are created to be aged. This is typical of French and Northern Italian reds which expect their customers to lay wine by for a while. In the US wines are designed to be ready to drink when released and certainly within 10 years. They simply aren’t designed for long storage and won’t benefit from it. They might benefit from waiting a year or two, but not super long.Years ago, I read a wine column in the WSJ that basically amounted to "Don't try to 'age' wine on purpose; life is short; enjoy it soon, or now." They cited various examples of old bottles, carefully cellared and proudly brought forth, only to turn out spoiled.
Bordeaux reds and Barolos are tight and need aging and/or complete decanting to open them up through careful exposure to oxygen. Barolos need to cellar at least 10 years from what I’ve read.
So a wine connoisseur needs to be selective with their aging.
I have a nice wine fridge, but I don’t buy stuff that needs many years of aging and I don’t bother with aging for 10 years or more.