The ages of wine: maturation and ageing

Wine has a life cycle: it is created by soil and human ingenuity, and it goes through childhood, maturity and old age. Some wines can live for decades and other for a lot less, and this is decided by the winemaking techniques used to create it, how it is preserved and how it is aged.

In general terms, the wines that give their best while “young” become ready in a single phase, which takes place in airtight containers – like the steel tanks used in Cantina Pedres. Longer-lived wines, on the other hand, usually spend time in wood barrels and then are left to age in the bottle. By doing so oxygen is first added and then subtracted, achieving a structured and surprising flavour. This is what happens, for example, for some of our reds, which spend up to 9  months in French oak barrels, giving them a refined smoothness: Cerasio Cannonau, Muros IGT and the Cagnulari of the Antonella Collection.

Broadly speaking, red wines spend time in wood containers much more often that whites do, but what determines this choice is the result that one wants to achieve: in time wood releases tannic substances to the wine that give it a more complex, nuanced taste, so this the true deciding factor when it is time to go forward. Among the whites that spend time in French oak barrels the new Vermentino of the Antonella Collection stands out, since the 5 months it spends in wood barrels before ageing in bottle give it a remarkable aromatic note.

Furthermore, wine, oxygen and wood also share another point of intersection in the stopper, which is traditionally made from the bark of cork oaks – to the point that “cork” has become a synonym for it. Cork protects wine from an excess of oxygen and from other external agents very effectively, and also guarantees, thanks to micro-oxygenation, a constant evolution.

In Cantina Pedres we use stoppers made of natural cork, which guarantee a constant evolution of wines. In some cases, to safeguard even more the preservation of our wines, we also use DIAM stoppers. These stoppers represent a technological evolution of corks: they are the product of a natural innovation that has allowed for the creation of a technical cork closure that protects wine from sensory alteration – particularly TCA, the molecule responsible for the notorius cork taint.