When is a wine ready to drink?
We provide drinking windows for all our wines. Alongside the drinking windows there is a bottle icon and a maturity stage. Bear in mind that the best time to drink a wine does also depend on your taste.
Not ready
These wines are very young. Whilst they're likely to have lots of intense flavours, their acidity or tannins may make them feel austere. Although it isn't "wrong" to drink these wines now, you are likely to miss out on a lot of complexity by not waiting for them to mature.
Ready - youthful
These wines are likely to have plenty of fruit flavours still and, for red wines, the tannins may well be quite noticeable. For those who prefer younger, fruitier wines, or if serving alongside a robust meal, these will be very enjoyable. If you choose to hold onto these wines, the fruit flavours will evolve into more savoury complexity.
Ready - at best
These wines are likely to have a beautiful balance of fruit, spice and savoury flavours. The acidity and tannins will have softened somewhat, and the wines will show plenty of complexity. For many, this is seen as the ideal time to drink and enjoy these wines. If you choose to hold onto these wines, they will become more savoury but not necessarily more complex.
Ready - mature
These wines are likely to have plenty of complexity, but the fruit flavours will have been almost completely replaced by savoury and spice notes. These wines may have a beautiful texture at this stage of maturity. There is lots to enjoy when drinking wines at this stage. Most of these wines will hold in this window for a few years, though at the very end of this drinking window, wines start to lose complexity and decline.
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Description
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Jasper Morris MW is a highly respected writer and critic on the wines of Burgundy. He has been a Master of Wine since 1985, with an illustrious career behind him as a wine merchant and author. He was Berry Bros. & Rudd’s Burgundy Director from 2003 to 2017
This second edition spans 800 pages, with expanded coverage of over 1,200 vineyards, 300 wine villages and 700 domaines. It offers detailed insider knowledge on the places and people that make Burgundy such a special winemaking region.
Jasper gives particular attention to Burgundy’s more affordable regions: Chablis, the Hautes-Côtes de Beaune and Nuits, the Côte Chalonnaise and the Mâconnais.
The book includes 45 full-colour maps – all of which have been revised and updated since the first edition – shining a light on Burgundy’s complex network of vineyards and villages. It also includes six new maps, which illustrate plot-by-plot holdings in individual Grand and Premier Cru vineyards.
See our Inside Burgundy Mixed Case: four excellent wines from Burgundy, as selected by Jasper Morris MW and it comes with a beautiful hardback copy.
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