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? 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…
This article appears in Mar 4-10, 2009.