A question on when to drink certain wines

Roberta

Your understanding is correct. Wine changes in the bottle. In general, most wines get better for a while, then go downhill. Wine can be too young to have reached its full potential, and it can be old enough that it no longer tastes good at all.

Yes, it's very important. How wine changes in the bottle, and how long it lasts before starting to go downhill depends on several things: what part of the world it's from, what the specific wine is, what the vintage is, and how it's been stored. There are vintage charts that you can use as a guide (Google will turn up lots of them), but they are never as specific as you might like them to be, and no chart can take storage conditions into consideration.

What many people do when they buy a wine to put away for aging is to buy a case of it, estimate when it might be ready, then start tasting a bottle every year from then on.

Getting back to your bottle, again, how it's been stored is very important, but my guess is that is that either now or some time over the next few years would a good time for it.