Short answer: the question is when to open the bottle, and every answer you’ve ever been given, mine included, is a forecast dressed as a fact. Wine doesn’t have an expiry date; it has a curve, the curve depends on the bottle, and nobody has seen your bottle. So here is how I draw the curve, where it’s reliable, and the one rule that beats every window ever printed.
Where the numbers come from
Most wine is made to drink on release and stays roughly the same for two or three years, then starts to fade. That covers almost everything under twenty dollars and a great deal above it. The windows that matter are for the minority of wines built to change: reds with real tannin and acid, whites with real acid and something to lose it into, sparkling wine on its lees, sweet and fortified wines that were practically designed to outlive their makers.
For those, I work from three things. The grape and the place, which set the range: a serious Barolo has a longer arc than a serious Beaujolais, and both have longer arcs than a Pinot Grigio, however serious. The vintage, which shifts the range: a hot, early year usually drinks sooner and shorter; a cool, slow one later and longer. And the producer’s track record, which is the strongest of the three, because the same house tends to make wines that age the same way year after year. From those I give you a range, and the honest width of that range is usually about a third of its length. “2028 to 2036” means the middle of the window is more likely than either end and the whole thing could be off by a couple of years.
What moves it
Storage moves it most. A bottle that lived in a cool, dark, still place for a decade is the bottle the window was written for. A bottle that spent two summers on top of a refrigerator is older than its label by five years, and no window survives that. Closure moves it: screwcaps age slower and more evenly than cork, so a screwcapped wine sits at the late end of any range you’re given. Bottle size moves it: a magnum ages slower than a bottle, a half faster. And your taste moves it more than any of them. Some people want the fruit and the grip, which means early. Some want the tea and the leather and the wine gone quiet, which means late. A window is a range of correct answers, not a point.
The rule that beats the window
If you own more than one bottle of something, open one early. Not when the window opens, before it. You lose one bottle of pleasure at the front and buy certainty about the other five, because now you know how that wine, from that year, stored in your conditions, is actually moving, and every printed window in the world is a guess about a wine that isn’t yours. The second bottle you open on schedule; the third when you want it.
If you own one bottle, the answer is simpler and nobody likes it: open it inside the window, in the earlier half, on a night you’ll notice. A wine that’s a little young is a wine. A wine that’s a little dead is a lesson.
What I don’t know: how your bottle was stored before you met it, which is most of the answer. When I give you a window in the app, it assumes the bottle has been treated well. If you know it wasn’t, move everything I say earlier.
Straight answers
How long does wine keep after buying it?
Most wine is made to drink now and holds for two or three years. Only wines built to age, serious reds, high-acid whites, sparkling and sweet wines, need a window at all.
How accurate are drink windows?
Roughly, plus or minus a couple of years on a ten-year window, and worse if the bottle was stored badly.
Should I open wine early or late in its window?
Early if you have several bottles, so the first teaches you about the rest. Early half if you have one.
Does a screwcap change the drink window?
Yes. It ages the wine slower and more evenly, so lean toward the later end of any range.