Drinkability can be a rather nebulous term, but for me, drinkabilty refers to the ease which one can drink a glass of wine or, for that matter, three glasses. In my view, drinkability is the key to enjoying wine and is intrinsic to the evanescence of great wine.

Drinkability is vintage-dependent. A good vintage provides suitably ripe fruit with sufficient acidity and tannins, or structure. These structural components ply a wine if you will, toning down the weight and sweetness inherent in riper grapes from warmer regions; while also lifting the more savoury herbal tang evoked by grapes from cooler areas. Structure imbues a wine with freshness, balance and most importantly, drinkability.

Structure also serves to protect a wine’s core, or the indelible sensorial impression a wine makes when drunk. This core is firstly reminiscent of primary fruit aromas and later, with age, turns into a meld of complex flavours and softer textures as obvious aromas transcend mere fruit associations to touch on the carnal, visceral and ineffable.

Paradoxically therefore, the firmer structure of an ageable wine detracts from its drinkability when young. Drinkability is attained when tannins soften and the complexity inherent in top-drawer Bordeaux, Burgundy and Barbaresco and Barolo, among other ageable wines, comes with time.

Ageability is based on the propitious combination of fruit ripeness, structural components in a wine and many unquantifiable factors. It is dependent on the voice of the vineyard (soil type and structure, vine age, topography etc.), agreeability of climate in any given year, grape variety (Riesling generally ages with more grace than Pinot Gris, for example) and the proclivity of man to further shape a wine’s natural carapace with oak and extraction techniques, in the winery.

In all, we can conclude that good vintages provide more ageable wines than poor vintages, wet and cold perhaps, that occlude both fruit quality and the structural components so necessary for balance and ageability. However, while we can also conclude that good vintages provide wines of sumptuous drinkability with time, we should also ponder average vintages in the hands of good vignerons, vectors of eminently pleasurable wines of real drinkability that appear more suited in many ways, to contemporary drinking patterns and most importantly, pleasure. Pleasure and drinkability are more than just synonymous. They are emotively bound terms!

After all, ageable wines are often, but not always (Vouvray anyone?), more expensive than soft and fruity wines of imminent approachability, made to a low price-point and consistent flavour profile. Ageable wines demand erudition and patience of the consumer and yet, we live in an era when the vast majority of wine, be it inexpensive or premium, is drunk within 24 hours of purchase. This reality is juxtaposed against a dynamic in which the world’s ‘collectible’ (a loose term in need of a definition perhaps, yet I will save it for another day) and arguably, most ageable wines, are increasingly the domain of speculators and the ultra-rich. This paradigm begs the question, ‘Who is ageing these wines to the point of optimal drinkability?’ Very few people, I suggest.

Given these dynamics, there is indeed fine value to be found in wines from reputable producers in average vintages. I am not speaking of wash-outs such as 2002 in the Piedmont, or the egregious 2004 for the red wines of Burgundy, but about vintages like 2008 in the southern Rhone, for example. 2008 was not a great year but it was not altogether poor, either. Are not wines such as Domaine de la Boussière’s 2008 Vacqueyras, invigorating and capable of slaking one’s thirst while stimulating curiosity, more attuned to the precocity of the current drinking climate? I can think of numerous other examples. Wines such as these do not need ageing and yet, they will provide a five-year window of drinking pleasure due to judicious levels of ripeness, neither too sweet nor green, with lively astringency and acidity for, you guessed it, wonderful drinkability.