Whether you believe it or not, wine does have a ‘life curve’ like human beings. By no means, I am not ” drunk as a Lord” when I pretend this! 

Riesling has the longest life curve of all white wines. For example, Müller Thurgau or most of the Chardonnays produced for daily consumption,

are wines which should be consumed young, they tend to taste “tired” after 2-3 years which means their life curve is short.

Riesling and great Cabernet Sauvignon wines taste unbalanced when they are young. Let us compare such young wines with a youngster of 14/15 years of age. Only the connaisseur may get a feeling that a great but young Riesling has a long future but it does not – yet – offer the charm, the bouquet, the flavor of a wine without bottle age.

Both, a great Riesling or a great Cabernet need time to mature which means that they show their fruit only after a couple of years.

It is important that good wines which will be laid down need in a darker kind of environment with a relative temperature between 12 – 15° C.

Good Riesling have the highest contents of acidity of all white wines,

the red grape Cabernet Sauvignon shows a high degree of tannin. Both, acidity and tannin are the backbone of great wines, both help these wines to mature and to live for 10, 20, 30 or more years.

A chain of chemical reactions alters over the years the aroma of the wine, the texture and taste of the wine which finally create a great aroma, the BOUQUET. The maturing process is being influenced by the natural content of sugar, acidity and phenol. Another factor is important to grasp:

great Riesling wines of exceptional vintages such as i.e. 1976 show a high amount of extract which is still the “soul” of any exceptional wine. It

is not the high alcohol content which keeps the wine alive, it is the extract together with acidity and sugar. We shall offer you mature Riesling wines with as low as 7,5% existing alcohol and these wines are fabulous. This extract in exceptional vintages can be initially aggressive to the heart of the consumer – whilst this effect will soften over the years and consequently the mature wine will be easier to be consumed. If it wasn’t for the cork which starts shrinking over the years, quicker or slower depending on their quality, they could live for ages. This is why connoisseurs cover the cork with liquid zeal to avoid leakage.

In the year 2000 a wine merchant in San Francisco staged a comparison tasting between a 1900 Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese and a 1907 great red Cabernet Sauvignon of Bordeaux. Both corks had been zealed off with wax to prevent oxygen to come into touch with wine because of the shrunken condition of the cork. The experts and connoisseurs who tasted the wines came to the result that the RIESLING showed off better and was still enjoyable. 100 years of age, incredible! Hard to believe, isn’t it ? The life curve of a Riesling rises over the first 5-8 years steadily, it stays on the

highest point for years to come, usually up to 15 – 25 years. As soon as the wine loses some drops due to leakage of the cork oxygen will get into contact with the wine, SO2 which all wines need to live, will disappear and the colour of the wines will change from green yellow to dark yellow.

This may also happen when you open a bottle of a 20 year Riesling. Connaisseurs know that once the cork is extracted the colour of the wine will darken after a few minutes but they will continue to sip, to enjoy the incredible fruit of this wine.