It used to be said, about the British wine lover in particular, that one drank wines purchased by one’s father and bought wines to be consumed by one’s children. Bordeaux was the apogee of the convention, the popular image conjuring a scene of wooden cases of classed growth claret gathering dust in a cellar at the family home, ready to be broached after maybe a decade, maybe more.

Today, such an approach seems fanciful. For a start, fewer city dwellers have access to such an idyllic storage facility. But there is also a general consensus that the great wines of Bordeaux no longer require such extended cellaring, and are more approachable at a younger age. So is this really the case? And is the trend part of a conscious decision from producers, or the result of other factors?  

The evolution can be traced back to the late 1990s, when the US critic Robert Parker was in his pomp, championing wines that were round, plush and seductive on first release. Parker – no fan of the British palate or, one suspects, convention – rewarded wines with ripe, polished, succulent fruit and tannins that his US audience could enjoy immediately from their Boston townhouse without the need to stick them away for years in a rambling country pile.

But the wines of Bordeaux, more perhaps than any other, are judged on their ability to evolve and develop the wonderfully beguiling secondary and tertiary characteristics – cigar box, leather armchairs, forest floor – that take a wine from great to profound. And the jury is out on whether the wines from the turn-of-the-millennium vintages have managed to do so.

Jancis Robinson MW, Parker’s great rival on this side of the Atlantic, made a rather pointed pronouncement some years ago, when suggesting that, ‘Depending on how heavily their makers, or at least proprietors, fell for the religion of (excessive) ripeness, wines made in vintages from the early 1990s to the mid-to-late 2000s may turn out to have shorter lives than wines made from the vintages immediately before and after this period.’

The years either side of the turn of the century were marked by highly concentrated wines – notably on the Right Bank – made from extremely ripe grapes from which the maximum amount of tannin and colour was extracted before maturation in new oak barrels. These were all winemaking decisions, and it is just as clear that Bordeaux producers have, over the last decade or more, been seeking to refine such a formula to make wines that are approachable early but without compromising long-term prospects.

In recent years, Robinson feels that, ‘Like wines made elsewhere, typical red Bordeaux has become much fresher and less freighted by alcohol and oak’, something she describes as ‘a welcome development’. Of course more modest bottlings can usually be enjoyed much younger than the classed growths, while vintage variation also plays a part. The 2003s, on account of the heatwave summer, generally lacked the acidity for long ageing, whereas the more structured, powerful 2005s have demanded patience.

Today, there seems to be a committed effort among winemakers to balance accessibility with durability. According to Bordeaux-based critic Jane Anson, ‘Better plot selection during harvest, and softer extractions during fermentation have allowed many châteaux to consciously make wines that tend to be accessible a little younger than in the past.’ Less oak – a prevailing trend – usually makes for wines with gentler tannins, while softer extraction at lower temperatures generally means avoiding the most bitter part of the tannins. Crucially, though, this doesn’t necessarily impact a wine’s ageing ability, Anson says. ‘Look at the likes of Pichon Comtesse or Montrose – these are still exceptional estates that you would happily bet on to go the distance. And in the case of estates such as Troplong Mondot, these new approaches probably make them better bets for long ageing than during the years of high alcohols and high oak.’

There can be little doubt that modern Bordeaux can and often should be opened much sooner than has traditionally been the case. And for the most part, this can be seen as a good thing. After all, none of us should need an excuse to open that first bottle of a case. But if you do need some persuading, just think of it as reconnaissance into when you should open the next one…