The drinking window
My is a bottle.
everyday under $25 · cellar-worthy $25–$75 · collector over $75
Open it tonight.
Window — — — · At peak
The life of a bottle
Every wine crosses the same arc.
Youth
Purple-rimmed and tightly wound. Primary fruit, raw tannin, everything still in the future.
Opening
The edges soften. Aromatics begin to lift and the structure starts to make sense.
Peak
Fruit, structure, and tertiary character in balance. The stretch the cellar was for.
Fading
Garnet at the rim. Still generous, but the fruit is quietly packing its bags.
Past
Tawny, dried-out, a memory of itself. Interesting once — a lesson after that.
Reference windows
Where the classics sit tonight
The model · rules v1.1
How the window is computed
Every wine ages on its own curve
Barolo needs a decade; Sauvignon Blanc needs a corkscrew. Each of the 78 styles in the rules engine carries four boundaries: when it starts drinking, when peak begins, when peak ends, and when it's done.
Price is the honest proxy for structure
An everyday bottle (under $25) isn't built to evolve — drink it young, no math required. Cellar-worthy ($25–$75) runs the standard curve. Collector (over $75) runs the extended one: longer holds, longer peaks, decades of runway.
Some wines go quiet in the middle
Left Bank Bordeaux, Barolo, Hunter Semillon and friends pass through a dumb phase — closed, sullen years where patience is the only correct answer. The engine warns you before you waste one.
Stop doing this math by hand.
CellarWise tracks every bottle you own — same rules engine, applied to your actual cellar.
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