[Don Plumley]

Ian - yes, many wines benefit from some time laying down, but honestly, the stat for wine life after being purchased is something in minutes. People in general buy a bottle and drink it. One of the reasons French wines, in general, benefit if not require aging is due to chaptalization (adding raw sugar to the pressed juice to increase the alcohol potential due to under-ripened fruit).

Here in California (chaptalization is technically illegal in the States), our problem is too good of a growing climate -- we produce very, very ripe fruit. As a result, and also influenced by Parker, the industry is producing very high alcohol wines - 15-17%. Even my Pinot hit over 30% RS producing 15% alcohol. Fortunately the fruit is complex enough so we are not tasting the alcohol which can't be said for lots of high alcohol zins, for example.

The wines you mentioned, Tuscans, Riojas, Bugundies, plus big CA cabs and add in my current favorite, Priorat, tend to benefit from time in the bottle for the tannins to calm down. But we've seen that while Burgundies benefit from 10 years of rest and keep getting better, most of the CA stuff starts peaking out at 7 or 8 years and then starts going downhill. I don't know why this is, though I have lots of theories about age of vineyards, etc. Face it, in CA we've been making wine for 100 years, in Europe they've been making wine, well, forever by comparison.

Milu - Not sure how to take your comment. Certainly the huge volume producers are manipulating a lot of things to hit a consistent taste profile. But this is not wine I buy. And there is this crazy service that will tell you how to modify your wine (tannis, acids, etc.) to hit certain Parker scores. But speaking on behalf of the many craft winemakers that believe in the craft, we let the grapes do what they do and express the unique nature of each block and each year. So I'm not sure I like being lumped into your "California winemakers" statement if I read it the way I think you meant.