Here’s How to Tell if a Wine is Worth Aging

Robb Report wrote a detailed story to help readers better understand whether they should purchase wine to drink now or to age in their homes for years to come. Chateau Montelena Winemaker Matt Crafton is quoted throughout the story and the winery’s 2007 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon is recommended as a stellar example of a wine that evolves with time – and that will be available to purchase again this summer as part of the winery’s Decade Release Program.

Writer Sara Schneider says that the beauty of a wine – such as a Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon – is that “it might evolve into something a few years down the road that offers beautiful aromas of fruit compote and a bouquet of dried flowers, complex and intriguing layers of flavor and smooth, integrated tannins that say more about the vineyard and vintage than obvious flavor descriptors. Or it might have gone belly-up and just be limp and tired, with little left to say at all.”

Crafton explains that there’s a period “when the character of the vineyard, the vintage and the winemaking harmoniously meld. And it’s unique to that specific wine and, in some cases, that bottle. And in some wines, it’s a single spot.” It is for this reason that Chateau Montelena has developed a re-release Decade program to give “all consumers the chance to taste the moments of earlier years captured in the bottle: With every new release, they re-release a vintage from 10 years prior and library tastings are part of a new program onsite.” The 2007 Chateau Montelena Estate Cabernet Sauvignon will be re-released this summer.

Read detailed tasting notes on this wine, and several other great anecdotes from Crafton HERE