Practical investigations
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I have looked everywhere but cannot seem to find a satifactory explanation for the ageing of wines. From what I gather it has something to do with oxidation reactions, but I do not know the exact processes by which this can occur. The context of my query is that for my individual investigation I am trying to look at the differences in acidity between wines of different ages, and was looking for a method to accelerate the ageing process. Without in-depth knowledge of how wines age, however, I cannot even begin to devise a way in which I could even simulate the ageing of a wine. Your help in this matter is much appreciated.
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Igloo writes ...
You are unlikely to find a satisfactory explanation of the processes taking place when wines age, simply because there are so many reactions of very many different types taking place, and most of these are likely to be complex. The internal interactions between all the components present, e.g. acids, tannins, alcohols and esters are impossible to predict with any degree of accuracy, and of course in reality wines often take years to “mature”. Clearly there is no obvious way to accelerate this.
May I suggest that you allow samples of different wines to stand in contact in air for several days, analysing them daily to study how their acidity levels vary over time. This oxidation process in much faster than the internal “ageing” reactions, so is therefore more adaptable for study in a school or college laboratory. Several students have carried out this type of investigation before and have come up with some useful and interesting results.
Risk assessment
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updated: 01 February 2008
