The simple way to age wine

I've heard a lot of consumers complain about having difficulty aging wine. I've found it's really quite simple.

When you go wine tasting as often as I have in the past three years (and feel obligated to buy wine at each tasting), you'll find you have quite a collection of wine on your hands. When you have more wine than you can drink, it becomes easy to age wine.

The old adage "out of sight, out of mind" is another trick to aging wine.

In the small refrigerated room we referred to as the cellar in the house where I lived in St. Helena, the racks were nine feet tall. The more expensive the wine, the higher it was kept. When you're just under 5'4 like myself and need to drag an awkward heavy stool in from the kitchen (which is on the other side of the house), you think twice about it. Everyday priced wines went at eye level and below for easy accessibility.

Now that I no longer have access to the "interwinery discount", I'm buying fewer new bottles and dipping into my older bottles. I also no longer have the luxury of an organized cellar; I keep 50 bottles in a wine fridge in my bedroom and about 10 cases plus large-formats in my sister's storage unit nearby. (Being that my sister is not much of a wine-drinker, I can trust her to keep an eye on my wine and not drink all of it.)

Last night as I perused the wines jammed haphazardly into my little fridge--a random mix of many different varietals, some recent purchases and a few older vintages--the 2004 Frank Family Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon seemed like a good choice.

The current vintage of the Rutherford Cab is $85 at frankfamilyvineyards.com; the pragmatic voice in my head said that this particular bottle was a special occasion wine, not a Friday night complement to pizza kind of wine. But with no height limitations, I had nothing stopping me.

If my boyfriend had waited any longer to come over, he might have missed out on this gorgeous wine. It was dark purple in the glass, almost black. Rich and full-bodied with elegant, fine-grained tannins. Layers of ripe blackberry, dark chocolate, and creme de cassis were followed by a super-silky sweet finish.

The pizza I made with sauteed mushrooms, red peppers, and prosciutto was tasty, but the wine surpassed the meal by a long shot. I have to admit that this wine surprised me and certainly exceeded my expectations.

It's been since the summer of 2009 since I visited Frank Family's tasting room, and I don't remember the wine being as good as it was last night. Some wines are definitely worth putting out of sight for a while.