At the Wall Street Journal, Will Lyons has some suggestions for wines you can — and should — drink sooner rather than stashing them in your cellar for a far distant future date:
These are styles of wines that aren’t enormously serious, in that they don’t have a huge range of flavors. (A shorthand for this category, suggested by Charles Lea, owner of London fine wine merchant Lea & Sandeman, is “anything you can drink out of an ice bucket,” which includes a variety of reds as well as whites.) That isn’t to deride these wines in any way. It is as legitimate to appreciate an uncomplicated style of white wine, designed to refresh and be sipped without too much thought, as it is to purr enthusiastically over the grandeur of a classed growth Bordeaux. In that vein, let’s celebrate this expression of youth.
The obvious place to start is with white wine, as the vast majority are best drunk within a year of the harvest — although the later bottlings always tend to taste a little better. Sauvignon Blanc, Vinho Verde, Moscato, Pinot Grigio and Picpoul de Pinet are the best candidates for “better when young.”
One wine that is absolutely made for this time of year is France’s Condrieu, made from the Viognier grape. Wine writer Hugh Johnson likened its smell to that of a “garden of unknown flowers.” You can find Viognier now planted all over the world, particularly in Australia and California, and I always find it is best drunk young. Chenin Blanc, dry Riesling and Argentina’s Torrontés can also bypass the cellar, as can almost any rosé.
With red wines, the choices aren’t as obvious. As a rule of thumb, anything heavy with lots of tannin, like Cabernet Sauvignon, Barolo or a heavy Merlot, improves with time in the bottle. Italy’s soft, fruity Dolcetto; straight Beaujolais, by which I mean Nouveau and Beaujolais-Villages (not Cru Beaujolais); and anything made with the Gamay grape are good to go from the off.
