Sounds like some nefarious White House report on Baby Boomers. At the ripe old age of sixteen, I was introduced to wine by way of Chablis and, although for me it was an acquired taste, I hung in there and began to really appreciate and enjoy it. Boone’s Farm was quite popular then, which was fairly unpleasant for me by the time I was going to high school drinking parties (I managed anyhow). But I later went through a phase of putting white wine on the back burner for a number of years and I think it was due mostly to the difficulty of finding good Chablis at a reasonable price. As California wine emerged in the sixties and seventies, Japan was busy buying up much of the notoriously small vineyards in France’s Burgundy region of which Chablis is a part, and making anything from Burgundy more difficult to find.

Having never forgotten my early inauguration into wine, when Brian Owens’ Wine Salon event for great French white wine was announced in the middle of summer, I was thrilled! I would guess with all of the Grand Cru and Premier Cru Burgundy alone, this probably was one of the most valuable collections of wine to be assembled by Austin’s formidable and most respected wine collectors for a tasting event like this. Some of the Grand Cru vineyards present, to name a few, included:

Corton-Charlemagne

Bâtard-Montrachet

Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet

Chevalier-Montrachet

Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet

Thirty-six in all, these very fine wines went back as far as the 1976 vintage, which is truly amazing considering they were all white wines. Sauternes (dessert wines from Bordeaux) certainly considered amongst great French white wine was conspicuously missing from the lineup and understandably so – these wines are so big and long they would have significantly interfered with tasting the more delicate and nuanced wines. As it was, there was a wonderful ’89 Baumard Quarts de Chaume (Loire) that challenged us in this tasting because it has many of the characteristics of Sauternes: sweet, big, mouth-coating, and a long finish with fabulous fruit; it wasn’t easy to recalibrate the palate back to dry whites.

Other regions represented just as well as Burgundy with the Rhone’s Condrieu (the world's best Viognier - no argument, except for people from California that haven't had this grape variety from this region) and Hermitage appellations; Alsace weighed in with fantastic Pinot Gris and Gewürztraminer by famed wine estate, Zind Humbrecht. Not to be left out, the Loire region showed its strengths with excellent Pouilly Fumé and some of the world’s best Sauvignon Blanc from famed producers Didier Dagueneau and Domaine des Baumard.

The difficulty, however, can sometimes be predicting the life of a great white wine, especially relative to reds. In my opinion, there were more than a few of the wines at this event that were quickly approaching the end of their drinkability window, and a few that even exceeded it. Even though I love many white wines, my red to white ratio has to be probably 10 to 1 so, I can taste a red and have a pretty good understanding of what needs to happen next: drink, hold, or either, and for approximately how long.

Aging whites can be less intuitive, and requires knowledge about the producer, region, vineyard, and historical performance, plus the vintage, which can trump all of the foregoing. Tasting them as they age is also a good way to keep ahead of the old age curve, which provides a strong argument for buying a case, or at least multiple bottles. White wine does not have but a miniscule amount, if any, tannin to protect it from oxidation because white wine does not make contact with the grape’s skin, nor does it cold soak for days with grape seeds or even stalks, during the winemaking process that provide the tannins in red wine.

White wine however relies almost completely on acidity to protect the wine from oxidation while aging. Some white wines, especially those recently released, might have excessively high acidity that will strip the enamel off your teeth (a highly exaggerated and baseless claim thrown in for effect), meaning that the wine needs more time to age before it can be enjoyed. Other wine that may have the same pH can be deceiving such as a Sauternes that spreads beautifully across your palate, but its acidity can be nearly entirely covered up with fruit. Aging Sauternes is however almost a no-brainer because we know that the best of them can develop complexity with bottle age for decades or even hundreds of years, due to its anti-oxidant acidity hidden beneath the fruit and residual sugar.

This brings me back to the subject at hand. The aromas and tastes of a wine that is oxidizing due to excessive age are quite apparent and there’s certainly no turning back when a wine hits that wall. I was sitting next to one of Austin’s most renowned collectors, Larry Peel, at this event and he told me that as of that moment, he had someone going through his cellar pouring out hundreds of bottles of wine that had expired beyond drinkability, and anything Larry has in his cellar is likely to be some of the finest. He told me not surprisingly that mostly whites were being laid to rest somewhere in his drainpipes. I asked him how he managed his cellar data and he feigned a smile, pointing a finger to his head; perhaps not the best strategy but certainly a common one.

Here’s what I know about all of this - almost all whites should be consumed within a few years of being released unless they are: dessert wines like Sauternes or Tokaji, most white Burgundy from Grand Cru or some Premier Cru vineyards and from a vintage considered at least very good, Quarts de Chaume from the Loire, and less than a handful of wines from Alsace. Whites from a number of other French appellations can generally be stored for up to five years or so without too much risk such as Premier Cru Chablis, Pouilly-Fuissé, and dry Vouvray.

Even then, as these wines age, many will be an acquired taste. For me I’d rather drink a younger more vibrant Condrieu, a younger, fresher Grand Cru, or even a younger Quarts de Chaume, but like so much in the world of wine, it is ultimately a personal choice. The big issue is to know your wines, store them minimally in a temperature-controlled environment at 55-56 degrees (with 70% humidity is even better for long term storage), and keep track of each wine’s drinkability window. 

Regardless of what style of wine you like, there is a truly incredible world of white wine that offers up as much enjoyment and complexity as red wine, just waiting to be discovered and embraced, which I am doing much more of these days.

David Boyer