How should I go about drinking an older bottle of wine?

If it’s white wine, the older date might work against you. In all cases, uncork it and take a whiff. If it smells like vinegar, it is vinegar. If it passes the sniff test, you can decant the bottle—pour it into a larger vessel so that the wine can breathe. And then give her a taste. Cheers!

Well, (you lucky dog) you go about drinking it the same way you would any other bottle of wine.

After it has become wine, there is really not much that can happen to it that will cause it to be harmful to you. The worst case is bacteria have gotten into the wine and turned it into vinegar, in which case you have a great bottle of high end vinegar to cook with.

Hopefully it has been properly stored (on its side) and the cork is not overly dry so it will not crumble when you uncork it. Carefully remove the cork and give it a sniff. Does it smell like wine or smell like vinegar? Pour a small bit in a glass, swirl a couple of times to let breath and so you can look at the “legs” to asses sugar content. Take a good sniff (once again, wine of vinegar?), then take a sip.

Enjoy!

White or red? If it’s white, it’s probably turned to vinegar by now, but a red might still be drinkable. The only way to tell is to open it. If the cork is in any way moldy or crumbly, ditch the wine.

I always thought wine gets better with age. Isn’t that why expensive wines are stored for years and years?

@HungryGuy to some extent this is true but white wines do not age as well as reds. In the majority of cases the wines being stored for decades as an investment would never be drunk so it doesn’t matter what the wine is like inside.

Whiskies are an entirely different matter. Whisky matures in the cask but doesn’t age or deteriorate at all in the bottle, so you can be sure that a bottle of whisky that’s 50 even 100 years old will taste exactly the same as it did the day it was bottled.

@downtide – Thanks! I didn’t know that about wine or alcohol :-p