One of the fun things about curating Master Vintner® is making and drinking the wine. You can do all the labwork in the world, but the real analysis begins when you do all of your cellar work, age the wine, and then pull a bottle out for an in-depth analysis of its potential. When I first started the Master Vintner® project, I made all of our initial wines, did laboratory tests on them, then put them in my cellar and left them there. I didn't taste them, or even look at them for the next six months. Oh, I wanted to! But they needed to age so I could get a full grasp on their full flavors and aromas.

Oh, it's so beautiful! 

Fast forward to last month! I pulled out my MV Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot wines and, after a bit more testing and lab numbers, I sat down and tasted them. First up was the Chardonnay. Traditionally, I am not a Chardonnay fan, because the grape is too easy to grow.

The grape in question

No, I'm not biased against an easy ride. When a grape is too easy to grow, crops well, and is easy to make into wine, a lot of people will plant it, and a goodly number of them won't have the chops to bring the most out of the vine. That's why there's so much mediocre Chardonnay out there. When you're growing a fussy, difficult grape like Pinot Noir, you have to be a stubborn, obsessive fool to get good fruit, and that's where magic starts, from the dogged pursuit of challenges.

So it was with my regular anti-Chardonnay bias that I tasted the first wine. Looking on my cellar notes, this is what I had:

Dry to medium dry with pear, apple, tropical, and citrus fruit notes and a rich bouquet of citrusy fruit blending into aromas of peach and pineapple melon. Tropical flavors intermingle with piquant tree fruits for a clean, medium-dry mouthfeel. Serve chilled and pair with fish, seafood, and hors d'oeuvres.

Here's me tasting, live and uncut:

I'll cut to the chase: as good as I hoped it would be, it's better. Don't let the potato quality of the video fool you: that wine blew way past my expectations--body, aroma, flavor, it's all there, and I didn't do anything to enhance or alter the wine, rather I adhered to the directions faithfully. Next up I've got a bunch more Master Vintner® wines to make ( a couple of each, actually!) and the Chardonnay is going to get some oak, I'm going to tweak the acidity, might look at the tannin profile, and will certainly see if there's a sweet spot where the alcohol content might support a bit more body.

I'll be documenting each of these experiments as I go. Some are done pre-fermentation, some need to be done post, at filtering, or just before bottling, and each can contribute some excellent character.

Of course, we'll just have to wait to see how good they can be . . . which brings up an important point, when can you drink your Master Vintner® wines? The answer is a bit complicated.

Aging Gracefully: When You Can Start Drinking Your Wine=

When it comes to aging kits, some folks go for the minimum, trying their first bottle within a week of the bottling day. That's not enough time for the wine inside to have calmed down from the agitation of bottling and corking, much less to show what it's going to taste like when it's ready.

Generally after three months in the bottle, a wine will show the beginnings of its character. For most whites and virtually all reds, six months is needed to smooth out the wine so it can begin to express its mature characteristics. Heavy reds will continue to improve for at least a year, rewarding your patience.

Aging depends entirely on your cellar. Master Vintner® wine kits will age as well as any $15-$25 bottle of wine of the same style. When pressed, I usually say a maximum of three years, not because the wine can't continue to improve (it certainly can) but because if your cellar doesn't have good conditions, your wine will not age gracefully.

When it comes down to it, what's on the inside of a bottle of wine is less important than what's on the outside, the external conditions that the bottle will be stored in. Under ideal conditions Master Vintner wines to age easily for 15 years under a good cork. The catch is, ‘ideal’:

1. Total absence of electromagnetic radiation, including both visible and UV light
2. 70% relative humidity, without variation
3. 52 degrees F temperature with no variance of more than 1/10 th of a degree at any time
4. Total absence of any sort of vibration
5. Zero external aromatics (i.e., no smells, organic or otherwise that could taint the wine)

Any divergence from these conditions instantly reduces a wine’s aging potential.

In the nominal storage situation in a suburban home, I usually see shorter aging potential. In some climates, where people use air conditioning, the humidity rapidly destroys corks and spoils wine. In northern climates, the heating/cooling cycle of the home rapidly oxidizes the wine. This is why my aging recommendations are so vague: any discussion of aging necessarily becomes a larger discussion of. how you store the wine, and where.

So how long then? You'll get maximum flavour from your whites after 12 months, and diminishing returns after two years. With big reds, they'll mostly peak after 1-1/2 to two years, with diminishing returns much after 3 years, keeping in mind that the better your cellar, the longer these times become.