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Autumn leaves swirl in the breeze, their earth-tone scents rustling with the dusty residue of a long, hot summer. A thick, sultry mist lingers, preserving the rich aroma of late-season fruit pies baking in a nearby kitchen. Rain-soaked earth is poised between lush organics and the tired esters of decay, with secretive aromas of exotic mushrooms dancing at the edge of perception.

Is this some sort of lurid paean to the fall? Actually, no. It’s a tasting note. One that might be written for a well-aged red wine.

The differences between wines tend to disappear with age, though there are definitely outliers and exceptions, and some wines are identifiable no matter how distant their date of birth. But if some sort of broadly applicable character could be ascribed to old reds, the exceedingly autumnal prose above might just be it.

Baked red fruit. Mushrooms. Black, water-soaked earth. And above all, the smell of recently-raked leaves… past their dry, desiccated stage, but before they molder under the first melting snows of winter. It may sound strange to the uninitiated, but it’s considered a highly appealing quality by aficionados of older wine. (Those who prefer powerful fruit über alles will likely want to avoid wines in this vein.)

Grape varieties and sites with highly individualistic signatures can either avoid this fate or integrate it with their own personalities. Old Hermitage, for instance, will often add an animalistic note that, for lack of a better term, I’ve come to identify as meat liqueur. (And yes, I’m as disturbed by that concept as you are, though there’s a semi-legendary Jamaican meat wine that people keep telling me to try. No thanks.) Piedmontese nebbiolo will perpetually retain its characteristic tar and roses. Cabernet-based wines (and many of their merlot-dominated brethren) will be firmer, with the leaves edging more towards tobacco than deciduous, and the occasional intrusion of bell pepper; this is the usual fate of Bordeaux.

The question is perhaps begged: which red wines will deliver this classic fall palette? As noted above, in a sense all of them will, but some will do it more plainly than others. Burgundy, for example, reaches much of its optimum destiny in variations on this theme, and pinot noir from elsewhere will often do the same, albeit in a fruitier fashion. Barolo, Barbaresco and other nebbiolo-based wines from the Piedmont show strong tendencies towards this asymptote as well, with the aforementioned caveat about flowers on the highway. Rioja and many other Spanish blends strong in tempranillo are classic carriers of the style. And even Beaujolais, of a certain class but with a shorter term of development, can take on the characteristics of older Burgundy.

Other wines will most definitely show this sort of development, but intermixed with their own qualities, which can be coequal or even dominant. Syrah from cooler climates – Hermitage, Côte-Rôtie, St-Joseph, Cornas, Crozes-Hermitage (all in the Rhône Valley), Walla Walla (Washington), El Dorado County (California), the Margaret River in Western Australia – will bring leather and blueberry to the mix, as well as that inevitable layer of animale. Chianti and other sangiovese-based wines hold on to a bit more strawberry and spice as they age, while the vast range of southern Italian grapes (aglianico, nero d’avola, negroamaro and the like) have a fiery wildness that they never quite shed. Grenache (southern Rhône, Priorat) doesn’t always age well, but when it does it usually tastes like a rich stew of meat, Provençal herbs and some sort of fruit liqueur. It’s better than it sounds, even for vegetarians.

That’s only a partial list, of course; a full accounting would fill a book. But there are also telltale signs of a wine that won’t develop past the summer of its exuberance. The first and most obvious is dominating, ultra-concentrated, jam-like fruit; these wines tend to be fruit bombs with shrinking warheads as they age, which means that they’re usually most enjoyable in their flashy youth. Another is oppressive alcohol not counterbalanced by sweetness; thus, Port can age (though it will always be sweet and fruity, not fall-like), but a “dry” pinot noir at 16% will turn into fruit-infused vodka. And a young wine that tastes of artificiality, as most inexpensive reds destined for supermarket shelves do, will fall apart with surprising rapidity, never reaching any sort of destination at all.

“So,” you’re objecting, “this is all fine, but I wasn’t gifted a cellar full of old reds by a kindly English uncle. What good does it do me?” There’s still hope. Some retailers hold on to (or purchase late-released stocks of) partially-aged wines, which can provide a glimpse of these aromas and flavors. Locally, the various incarnations of Marty’s and Martignetti are probably strongest in this regard. But an even better option is a restaurant that deliberately purchases and/or cellars mature wines. Most high-end establishments…No. 9 Park and the like…will feature some wines of this type, but the real local star is Troquet, where a deliberate policy of selling older bottles at small markups (which is not, of course, synonymous with “cheap”) makes all these autumnal glories available on a moment’s notice. And there’s no picking leaves out of your hair afterwards.

(First published in stuff@night, 2007.)