Most white wines will fit nicely on a lovely wine rack and, until being poured into your glass, will go nowhere else. You wouldn’t usually consider cellaring a white, or so I thought. Turns out it depends on the varietal, what vintage, and who made it.
For example, certain Chardonnays and Rieslings are deemed suitable for the cellar. The Domaine d’Auvenay 2002 Chardonnay is given a drinking threshold of 2035. Clemens Bush Rielsing, 2001, should be good until beyond 2060. Chenin Blanc features prominently among cellar-worthy examples (I’m back in my ‘1001 Wines’ guide by the way). One bottle, the 1989 Didier et Catherine Champalou, will apparently serve well until 2030. I wonder what bottle openers will look like in twenty years.
I also wonder how hard it would be to select a bottle left sitting for so many years, like a family heirloom, growing in value exponentially, then finally open and drink it. One day it provides a talking point for below-ground gatherings and Halloween parties in the dungeon; the next, it’s gone.
One can only hope that another bottle is still aging somewhere in that cellar, worthy of drinking some time soon, and another for a few years down the road. In fact, my suspicion is that anyone who can afford that 1989 Chenin Blanc and has a house big enough to build a cellar probably has a few good bottles hanging around in a dark, cool lair of wines.
