The question from Christine Frishett:
"We recently spent lots of time and money remodeling our kitchen. We were working on some finishing touches and started looking around the room for places we could store our wine. Then we started to wonder how long we've had some of the bottles. I'm concerned some bottles may have been sitting there too long. But how long is too long? How can we tell if we have a bottle of wine that will benefit from sitting on the shelf for a few years or one that will not be fit for salad dressing if we let it sit?"
The short answer: 95-98 percent of wine is meant to be consumed within the first year after bottling. The other 5 percent? The big boys with loads of tannin: Bordeaux, Italian reds, Spanish Rioja/Ribera del Duero, French Champagne, some California cabernets, Burgundies (white and red), some German rieslings, and a few sturdy Australian shiraz. But that doesn't mean your $10 2004 shiraz is plunk already — it's probably fine, just not as fresh as the winemaker intended. And certainly drinkable. Only tired of being neglected. Reds hold up better than whites, depending on whether the space is air-conditioned or not. That said, if you're staring at a hot cupboard full of whites dating to the early '90s, consider them toast. You might also look to see if once light yellow liquid in the bottle has faded to a dull brown, which is the bellwether of dead wine.
Rules of thumb for storing wines: 1. Always store your cork-stoppered wine on its side. This keeps the cork moist, creating an air-tight seal to keep wine-destroying oxygen out of the bottle; 2. Never store wine in a room kept at more than 80 degrees — heat literally cooks out the flavor; and 3. Drink whites quickly (within the allotted year) since many of the aromatics can dissipate. Exceptions include those listed above.
And the best way to know if a wine has aged past its prime? Open it up.
This article appears in Mar 11-17, 2009.