How long to keep your wines is always a tough decision. You can go by generalities, like vintage ratings or what one source in my recent article said: wine under $12 should be drunk now and wine over $25 may benefit from aging.
For more specific aging timelines, you can look online to see if the winemaker has a chart or recommendations for your wine by vintage. You can check sources like CellarTracker.com and see what people are saying about particular wines and vintages. But it still feels like a crapshoot to me.
Now Paul Gregutt, writing in The Seattle Times, has some recommendations for wines from Washington and Oregon based on tasting those from his own cellar. Overall, the ones he has stashed are lasting longer than might have been expected. He says Washington’s “red wines in general, and Oregon’s pinots in particular, develop beautifully over a decade or more, provided that they were initially well-made and balanced.” He particularly cites Washington’s Merlots as good values that are ageworthy.
It’s good to hear that Northwest wines are aging well; sometimes they get lost in the flood of California juice.
To read all of Paul’s article, follow this link.