Wait for what?
In short, wait till the wine is at the point they intend when they put it in the bottle. But even on a more macro scale they wanted me to wait or at least warn me that what I was about to taste was racked a month ago, or was just sulfured, or just finished malo. There is always a precondition for what one is about to taste when tasting with great winemakers in France. Because frequently I am tasting very young wine and when tasting before the wine is fully realized the winemaker is extra tense, in that they know this wine will change greatly and frequently on its way to bottling. It was important to wait and know this wine is not in an ideal state, but a precocious adolescent.
Also when opening bottles of recent vintages and/or perhaps a great older vintage, they all told me to wait. Wait for it to breathe, wait for it to integrate. Even with wine that has not moved from the cellar since bottling. You are waking this wine up from a deep sleep and it needs to stretch its arms, brush its teeth, have its coffee and read the paper, and then it can be delicious and blow your mind. But it needs that time. All great wine I believe needs to breathe. Because all great wine gets better in the glass and the last sip is usually the best. A happy dilemma. It's a disservice to yourself and the winemaker when you drink a great bottle entirely too quickly, or too young. It's fine to open for the sake of science, actually it's very educational, but buying wine to age, which we all Iike to do, we need to let it age. There is nothing like growing old with your own wine. Waiting too long rarely happens if you are buying the right wines. But the wait is oh so crucial. The difference between that 1st sip and 2nd sip can be radically different, but imagine the difference between that 2nd sip and 3rd sip after 2 hours open on a structured wine. I don't like drinking "through" closed wines. I prefer to open something else and revisit the closed wine throughout the night and next day. I sell all different types of wines at Fass Selections but the one common thread is that they all benefit from time in the bottle or time open breathing. It's something I look for I guess.
Now I am always telling my clients to wait for the wine to be ready or to aerate for ridiculous amounts of time. That's because I won't tell people what they want to hear, I tell them how it is. I just had the 2010 Christophe Billon Cote-Rotie “Les Elotins” and it took 3 days to open. The last bottle took 8 hours before the 3 day event. It is what it is. He is a great winemaker but an uncompromising one. You gotta wait, but once you do the wine is awesome. I think wine is better if you have to wait, because generally speaking it will get better with air. It's not like you are waiting for mediocrity. This is not $15 Pinot Grigio that tastes like metal if you don't drink it in an hour. Or $15 Shiraz that tastes of wood and alcohol if not consumed in 45 minutes. The fruit in those wines has a timer on it.
I love waiting. I love the slow build to greatness. I also can watch Berlin Alexanderplatz and binge watch LOST and Twin Peaks over and over again and recognize new stuff. So maybe my wines I import are a bit dense, but they will all get to a point of what it is, what the wine is about, that thing I liked. Some longer than others and some shorter than others. It's all in the game.
Now the next part for waiting is the hardest. And that is waiting done by a Fass Selections customer. We ask you to wait for 3 weeks before you drink the wine we ship you. The wine has typically traveled a long journey from Europe to our warehouse in Napa and then gets shipped all over the U.S. shortly after it arrives. The wine gets shaken up and just needs time to mellow. To get its circadian rhythm back. Bottle shock is very real and many customers have emailed me with stories of how bottle x was okay for the first 4 but bottle 5 was a revelation. It's because you waited. The longer you wait after shipping the better. It's a disservice to the winemaker and to yourself not to wait the 3 weeks.
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