Someone else paid for the waiting.

Buying mature wine is paying someone else for the waiting. They bought the wine young, kept it for ten or twenty years, carried the storage cost and the risk and now sell you the result. Two questions decide whether that is good value. Is their premium lower than what the waiting would have cost you? Did the bottle come through it well?

For wines that need a decade or more, bought from a source that can show where the wine has been, the answer to both is often yes. For wines that were ready on release, you are paying for years that added little. Whatever the wine, condition decides the rest.

The hidden cost of cellaring yourself

Laying down a young wine looks cheaper because the release price is lower. The gap narrows once you count what the waiting costs:

• Years. Classed Bordeaux is rarely rewarding before its eighth year and Barolo often needs a decade or more. That is a long time to have money sitting in a bottle.
• Storage. Wine you intend to keep for years does not belong in a flat. In Hong Kong that means professional storage, paid for every month you wait.
• Risk. A cabinet that fails in July, a move between cities, a delivery left in the sun. Every year adds a chance of damage and you carry all of it.
• Patience. Most people open their best bottles too young. A wine bought to keep for twenty years has a way of being opened long before.

Set that against the premium for age, which varies widely. For the most famous names it can be steep. For good but unfashionable estates it is often modest. Occasionally a mature vintage costs little more than the current release, which is where buying mature is most clearly the better deal.

Styles worth buying mature

The case is strongest for wines that are hard to enjoy young and slow to reach their best. Drinking windows give a rough sense of how long each takes.

• Classed Bordeaux. Firm tannin when young and a long plateau when mature. The mature bottle is the one the wine was made for.
• Vintage Port. Bottled within three years of the harvest and built to age for decades in bottle. Few people wait that long; a mature bottle has done the waiting for you.
• Rioja Gran Reserva. Red Gran Reserva must be aged for at least five years, including two in oak and two in bottle. Traditional houses often age it far longer and some release old Gran Reservas years later, which makes Rioja one of the easiest places to buy maturity straight from the producer. Rioja's ageing ladder explains the categories.
• Barolo. At least 38 months of ageing before release (18 of them in wood) and still years from its best when it arrives.
• Late-disgorged Champagne. Some producers keep vintage Champagne on its lees in their own cellars for many years and disgorge it shortly before release. The ageing happened under the producer's roof, so the storage risk was theirs. Where the back label gives a disgorgement date, it tells you when the wine left its lees.

Where you gain little

Age improves only a minority of wines and the premium buys nothing when it does not.

• Wines made for early drinking. Most rosé, light aromatic whites and entry-level reds lose their fruit with age and gain nothing in return.
• Most whites. Outside the great exceptions, such as Riesling, Chenin Blanc and Sauternes, age adds risk faster than it adds pleasure.
• White Burgundy, with care. From the mid-1990s a worrying number of white Burgundies aged far faster than expected, a problem known as premature oxidation. A mature bottle is a bigger gamble than the label suggests, so buy only with an impeccable storage history.
• A famous vintage on its own. A great year badly kept is worth less than a good year well kept.

Buying mature wine: what each source promises

Each source offers a different kind of assurance and prices it accordingly.

• The estate. Library and late releases come straight from the producer's cellar. The provenance is as good as it gets and the price usually reflects it.
• A reputable merchant. It should be able to say where a mature wine came from, when it arrived and how it has been kept. It should also take back a faulty bottle without argument. You pay a margin for that accountability and it is usually worth it.
• Auction. The widest choice and the most variable condition, usually sold as is with little recourse. A lot description tells you a great deal once you know how to read an auction catalogue.

Condition is everything

With mature wine you are buying one bottle's history, which may have little to do with the vintage's reputation. Judge each bottle on its own:

• Fill. The gap between wine and cork grows slowly with age and faster with heat. What is normal depends on the age and the shape of the bottle; the guide to fill levels sets out the scale.
• Colour through the glass. Hold the bottle up to a light. A red that looks brown well before its time is a warning. So is a white that has turned deep amber early.
• Label and capsule. Cellar marks and damp stains on the label are harmless. Seepage stains, a sticky capsule or a raised cork are signs of heat.
• Storage history. Where the bottle has been for the last ten years and how it travelled between places.

Then ask, in writing:

1. Where and when was the wine first bought?
2. How long has the seller held it, where and at what temperature?
3. Has it been recorked or reconditioned? By whom?
4. Did it come from a single cellar or was the lot assembled from several?
5. Will you take it back if it proves faulty?

A seller with good answers gives them readily. For bottles of real value, the full provenance checks go further.

An old bottle is only as good as the worst place it has been.

Tasting a mature wine is different

Mature wine is fragile. Stand the bottle upright for a day or longer so the sediment settles, then open it gently: old corks crumble and opening an old bottle sets out a calm method. Taste before you serve. Decant just before pouring or pour straight from the bottle, because air that helps a young wine can finish an old one. Serve it soon and expect it to change in the glass.

It also tastes different. The fruit recedes and savoury notes take over: leather, earth, dried fruit, forest floor. Not everyone loves that, so try a mature bottle at a tasting or a vintages dinner before you buy a case.

Buy more than one

Bottle variation grows with age. Two bottles from the same case can differ and two bottles of the same wine from different cellars can taste like different wines. When you find a mature wine you like from a source you trust, buy several bottles from the same lot. If the first is good, the others share its history. If one disappoints, the next tells you whether it was the bottle or the wine.

Three bottles that share one known history will teach you more than three from three different cellars and will let you down less often.