Hi, I received two bottles of German still white wine waaay back in the 1980's. One is Leibfraumilch Rheinhessen 1986 and the other is Schmitt Sohne Kabinett 1987. Both are sealed and never opened. They have been either stored in the origional box or on a wine rack all these years.(not refrigerated). are they still consumable?? please post back a.s.a.p. I would like to pop them open! Thanks a bunch!

well, i decided to give it a go and open one. the cork pretty much fell apart and landed inside the bottle while some of it stuck to the sides. also the color of the wine is an amber color like beer. it didnt smell all that great and had pieces of cork in it as i poured. owell. so much for the old saying..wine gets better with time. maybe not that much time or the storage of it was a factor.

The vast majority of wine is meant for drinking with a year og purchase; only a very tiny fraction are meant to be aged.

The Liebfraumilch was a cheap everyday drinking wine best drunk young, the other is probably welll beyond enjoyable drinking.

If you're going to age wine, as well as choosing one that will keep and improve with age you also need ideal conditions.

You don't say which one you opened; and howsabout opeing the other? If it doesn't smell good, don't drink it -- but having said that, it won't harm you if you do.

Peter is absolutely right. If you are interested in cellaring you really need to know your wine and what is meant to be cellared. That is a whole other world of wine.

I would say about 90-95% of wine is made to be enjoyed now or in the 2-4 yr mark from the date on the bottle.

Of course, I think it never hurts to open a bottle of old wine. As Peter said, if it smells funny it's probably not good. But of course..there are some great wines that have an odd smell. I would also say that if the color is off as you stated-then definitely not good.

Wine turns brown and muddy as it ages or is exposed to air. White wine (to my knowledge) should never be beer colored but straw or butter colored. Red colors range from ruby, garnet, deep purple, etc.

And no, as Peter said, it won't hurt you. It will just taste awful! Did you ever get to that other bottle?

Remember that if you are storing wine, always lay down, never upright where the cork will dry out and ruin the wine. Always store in a cool place with little temperature fluctuation and out of full daylight. I see so many people saving a nice wine on top of the kitchen cupboards. I say spoil yourself once in a while and pop that bottle you have been saving and keep it all to yourself to enjoy;)

Well I disagree with some of you. There are a lot of wines that can be easily aged.

Of course they are not 30 year-old whites. But there is a huge number of red wine that you can store for 8 or 9 years.

Anyway, I'm not an expert so when I buy a wine for ageing I always ask for the vintage info.

VictorC -

We agree with you completely that some wines CAN be aged - but if you look at the percentages of wines being sold right now, the vast majority are meant to be drink-now because that is how most people drink them. Yes, certainly 20 years ago many if not most wines were meant to be aged. That was the tradition back then. But because consumers began drinking them immediately - and complaining to the winery if the wine tasted poorly in that "early stage", wineries have been converting their styles over to drink immediate wine.

Yes definitely some have resisted that! You can find delicious Bordeauxs that need to be aged for 10 years before they're perfect. But those are in the minority in 2010.

What wines do you enjoy aging? How many do you tend to keep in your cellars for that purpose?

Presume one could say the good think about this article is to remember "You are never too old to enjoy wine, when you cannot remember, that the time to worry, enjoy wine in moderation while you can.

I think wine helps with keeping your brain healthy, so if you start to have problems remembering, that's probably a good time to enjoy red wine

As Arox said, in the Pregnancy topic the keyword like all things is Moderate Indulgence, sorry to say, in the U.K, many people go over the top & we do have a problem with binge drinking especially with the young, if you get time take a look at Drinkaware, its something our government put together to work with the wines & sprits trade.