Since we didn’t have any young stuff in barrels this Spring, we opted for a library tasting. Compared to our current vintages and personal preferences, we find white wines from 2013 and 2011 are a little over the hill.

Since most folks rarely or never taste white wines more than a couple of years old and consequently have been conditioned to youthful wines, I expected few folks to enjoy them.

Delighted to be wrong! Over a third of folks preferred the 2011 Sève to the 2016. I think 2011 was the best Chenin Blanc wine I’ve made, and I’ve won lots of golds, best of class, best of show, and Governor’s Trophy with previous Chenin Blanc wines in my career. However, I think it, like me, is past its prime, still pleasant (my pleasantness?), but I prefer the 2016.

The same was true with the Oyster White, which is Sémillon. Many preferred the 2013 to the 2016, which I do not. Mind you, if I were at your house and that was on the table, I would certainly enjoy it! Fortunately, I have multiple choices. 2016 is my current favorite. The 2018 is really good, too.

The upshot is that people do like white wines with a decade or more in bottle age. I’ve never found a correlation between age-ability and color.