The overwhelming majority of our wine purchases are for quick consumption. When choosing which wine to buy, you already have clues in your mind about what and when to drink it, and the wine completes this task at the first opportunity. The wines in this group are wines of recent vintage, that is, 2-3 years old.

We serve approximately 450 types of wine in our wine house in Kadıköy. Moreover, you can order all of them by the glass. Of course, most of the wines on the WAYANA menu are young wines. But the number of our wines that are more than 10 years old is too great to be underestimated.

You may come across aged wines, both among the wines you choose when you come to WAYANA, or among the samples that you, as a wine lover, have patiently matured for many years. As a wine enthusiast, when the moment you eagerly await comes and you open the mature wine, you will see a wine that has undergone great changes compared to its younger days. Aging, which leaves traces on our body over the years, such as hair turning gray and skin losing its tension, also creates changes in wine, which is a living organism. Let's take a closer look at these changes.

Changes in the Taste of Wine:

We recognize young wines by their flavors identified with the grapes from which they are made. Among the noble grapes, Merlot reveals itself with the taste of red plum, Sauvignon Blanc with the taste of fresh grass, and Viognier with the taste of apricot. In addition to these main flavors, if included in the production technique, vanilla created by the barrel effect or butter flavors if malolactic fermentation is applied will enrich the wine.

As the years pass and the wine ages, the flavors of ripening are added to these flavors. The fresh fruit flavors we experience when the wine is young turn into dried fruit flavors as it changes. Again, we see that flavors such as honey, earthiness, mushroom and hay, which we did not realize when we were young due to the intensity of the main tastes, become more prominent.

How does this change occur? The wine has an organic structure and the acid and alcohol in wine are in a constant chemical relationship with the microorganisms. The change created by this chemical relationship varies depending on time. The aromas and flavors you encounter when you open a five years old wine will surprise you by changing when the same wine has been waiting for ten years. Even if the acid, alcohol and sugar in the wine remain the same proportionally, the chemical change detected by our sensory organs is dramatic.

Changes in the Color of Wine:

The change in color of the wine is the easiest way to detect aging. The change in color is caused by oxidation, no matter how slowly it occurs. Just as contact with air causes iron to rust under the influence of oxygen in the air, the oxygen in the limited air trapped inside the closed wine bottle and the micro air ingress allowed by the natural cork have a similar effect on the wine.

White wine, which is lemon yellow when you first buy it, turns to amber color over time, and the wine, which was initially golden yellow, turns to dark orange. We observe that the color of salmon in rosés turns to the color of onion skin. The colors of red wines, which we see between ruby red and purple when young, shift towards brick red and shades of brown over the years.

We included the changes in the taste and color of wine in this article. We will devote another article on this subject to the changes that aging creates in the texture of wine and which wines are suitable for aging.