Which wines can you keep and which should you drink young?

Light white wine, rosé and simple red wine are best drunk young, because their appeal lies in fresh fruit, and that is the first thing to go.

Such wines contain little tannin and little residual sugar to fall back on. What you buy them for is the aroma and the freshness of the moment. If you leave them lying for years, you lose precisely that. Primeur wine belongs in this group too: it is made to be on the table within a few months of the harvest.

Wines with a lot of tannin, a lot of acidity, a lot of residual sugar or a lot of alcohol can last for years, because those four substances slow down ageing.

Red wine with a firm structure is the best-known group. Dessert wine and fortified wine also keep for a long time, because sugar and alcohol do the work there. White wine with high acidity and oak ageing can too, but that is the exception and not the rule. If you are unsure about a bottle, ask when you buy it. That saves years of waiting for a wine that will not get any better.

Pay attention to structure: tannin that dries the mouth, clear acidity and, in sweet wine, a high sugar content point to ageing potential.

On the label, the vintage helps you further. A wine of two years old that already drinks smoothly seldom gets better. The origin also says something: appellations with strict rules on yield and maturation more often produce wines that need time. The INAO manages 366 wines with an AOP or AOC status in France, each with its own product file.

Lay the bottle down at 15 to 20 degrees, in the dark, in a place without large temperature fluctuations.

The Australian Wine Research Institute advises storing wine cool and dry with the cork in contact with the wine. Above 25 degrees, quality deteriorates during long-term storage, and above 40 degrees you can see and taste the difference within a few days. Light is the second enemy: exposure gives the so-called lightstruck taste. A dark cupboard against a cool interior wall is almost always better than a kitchen cupboard above the oven.

Wine that is past its prime loses fresh fruit and colour, and what remains is acidity, tannin and alcohol with nothing to balance them.

With white wine the colour becomes darker, with red wine it turns browner at the rim. No alarm goes off at that point, so the safe route is simple: buy several bottles of a wine you want to keep and open one every few years. That way you know where the wine stands, instead of finding out afterwards.