As I write this, we've had a wonderful Christmas Eve meal of tourtière and have enjoyed a few different wines over the past couple of days. Christmas is a very special time for us, as in many families, as our adult kids come home, and I tend to bring out some of the special wines to celebrate the occasion.

I was very fortunate to meet by daughter's new dog - christened Nebbiolo! Can you tell that my daughter and her new husband are both in the wine industry? Nebbi is a real cutie and has added to our enjoyment of the holidays.

This holiday, I brought up a few of the wines that we had in the cellar. By cellar, I mean the storage locker in the underground garage which is not ideal but remains a fairly constant temperature with slow fluctuations and is definitely cooler than anywhere else. I rummaged thought the nine boxes that we have stacked up behind the Christmas decorations and took each and every bottle out, assessed whether I thought it was a potential candidate, and put aside eight or nine bottles.

There are a lot of opinions about ageing. My WSET course book stated that most wines do not benefit from ageing - in fact, 99% of wines should be drunk within a couple of years of buying the bottle. Interestingly, many of the Okanagan wineries do, in fact, suggest that ageing will be a great benefit to the wine that you are drinking. Winefolly states that most wines are released within two years of being picked as grapes and should be drunk within six months of being purchased.

I know that when I made wine in my basement from juice so many years ago, I found that having the wine sit in the cellar for twelve to eighteen months after bottling helped a lot - but that isn't really ageing - that just got the wine to that 'release' state. I might have aged one or two bottles an additional year but it was a rare occurrence.

When wine is bought from the store after its release, there is definitely a taste of fruit that is enjoyable and that many people desire from their wine. As a wine ages, the fruit flavour dissipates but there are benefits such as lesser tannins, reduced acidity, and an overall smoothness of flavour.

I had first hand experience with three different wines, all from the Okanagan. They were not all the same age and were not aged the same amount of time but this will hopefully give you some insight on ageing.


The first wine that we had was a Pinot Noir from the Hatch in West Kelowna. We bought it in October of 2016 as part of our first wine club purchase. We had originally signed up for the mixed case but then we spotted something unusual. The Hatch had three different Pinot Noir clones as part of their red wine case. We did a tasting of the wines in the case and immediately changed our order.

The different Pinot Noirs all had the number of the clone such as 767 and 777. The 777 clone was amazing! We absolutely loved it and decided that it would make a great candidate for ageing. It tasted of red fruits and had a complexity that seemed to really call out for a few years in the cellar. Looking at the tasting sheet that accompanied the case, it was suggested that these clones would age until 2019 and beyond.

Then, last summer, I was at the Hatch and I spoke to one of the hatchlings about the clones. He said that the clones should actually be consumed my the end of this year! Thus, it ended up on the special wine list last night.

I clearly remembered the wonderful taste of the 777 a year and a half ago. When I tasted the aged wine last night, I was quite disappointed. It had lost its distinctive fruitiness and really didn't have a lot of character to make up for this. It was rather bland and dull and did not show the expressiveness of the younger version.

It was an unusually blah wine as the Hatch usually has amazing wines. Did I wait too late? Would it have benefitted from even more time in the cellar? Was my storage at fault? Or was it a wine that should have been drunk young? I do not know!


The second wine, also from last night, was a 2013 Hester Creek Terra Unica Cabernet Sauvignon purchased last spring at the Hester Creek Crush Pad Party. I bought five bottles at the time and  I still have 3 bottles of the stuff and thought I'd try one to see how it was coming along.

Hester Creek has a great wine club - you don't have to commit to x bottles every year - you simply purchase your wine and get points for each dollar spend which you can use to buy wines at a later date. You also get to attend special functions like the Crush Pad Party

This wine tasted wonderful! We had it with some juicy steaks from the barbecue and the pairing was great. The tannins had settled down somewhat from the spring and there was a smoothness that was very tasty. It was a wonderful wine that had aged somewhat after a fairly short amount of time. I will definitely continue to age this one and try another bottle next Christmas! Kudos to you, Hester Creek!