drink in x years , newbie question

You can work out for yourself how long it has been kept from the vintage as your wine will almost certainly have the year of vintage on the label.

I would guess that the wine club means don't keep for more than 3 years after delivery, but why not ask them directly? In my experience various people make a lot of vague statements of this sort without specifying time after vintage or after release from the producer. Don't let them get away with it!

In practice, no one can predict for sure. Don't belive anyone who claims to. It depends on the wine, how the wine is stored, and on personal taste.

From listening to the comments of others and personal experience.

Gaining the the personal experience is of course a process that takes years. You could note your impressions of one of your wines now, and again in 1, 2 3, 4 years time. You would then of course need to be able to generalise that experience to similar wines.

You could try to shortcut the process by doing a "vertical" tasting - a tasting of the same wine from different vintages. But when doing this you must remember that all vintages are not the same.

Generally speaking, wines with good fruit, high acidity, and (for red wines) high tannin will keep. Some will have so much tannin that you will *need* to age the wine to make it pleasant to drink.

If you are lucky you might find that your opinions of when to drink a wine may coincide with those of some expert or other. In which case you could take advice from him-her.

All in all, it ain't easy.

It's not at all silly.

-- Steve Slatcher