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Drinking Window

One of the hardest questions in wine collecting is when to open the bottle. OENARI helps in two ways: a suggested drinking window calculated from your wine's characteristics and storage conditions, and My Drinking Window where you set your own dates based on personal experience. Together, they help you make informed decisions instead of guessing.

Suggested Drinking Window

OENARI uses a detailed maturity algorithm that evaluates a wide range of parameters for each wine. Based on these inputs, it calculates three suggested dates:

  • Drink from — The earliest point the wine is likely to be enjoyable
  • Peak window — The estimated period when the wine is at its best
  • Drink by — The point beyond which the wine may start declining

These are suggestions, not science. Wine is a living product and every bottle ages differently. The drinking window gives you an informed starting point based on available data — but it's not a guarantee and shouldn't be treated as one. The final decision is always yours.

What the Algorithm Considers

The more OENARI knows about a wine, the more accurate the suggestion. Among the parameters the algorithm takes into account:

  • Grape varieties — Different grapes age at vastly different rates. A Nebbiolo ages differently from a Gamay.
  • Wine color and style — Red, white, rosé, sparkling, fortified, and dessert wines all follow different maturity curves.
  • Producer — Established producers with a track record of age-worthy wines influence the prediction.
  • Region and appellation — Wines from certain regions and classifications tend to have longer or shorter aging potential.
  • Alcohol content — Higher alcohol can affect longevity.
  • Sweetness level — Residual sugar acts as a preservative and extends aging potential.
  • Aging vessel — How the wine was aged before bottling matters. Oak barrels, stainless steel, concrete, clay amphorae, and other vessels each contribute differently to a wine's structure and aging potential.
  • Classification — Grand Cru, Premier Cru, Reserva, and other quality indicators are factored in.
  • Vintage — The starting year anchors the entire calculation.
  • Your cellar conditions — Temperature stability, vibration, light exposure, and bottle position from your cellar settings directly affect how your wines age. Poor storage accelerates aging; ideal conditions extend it.

These are some of the key inputs — the full algorithm considers additional factors and combinations to arrive at its suggestion.

Better Data, Better Predictions

The algorithm can only work with what it knows. A wine with just a name and vintage will get a rough estimate. A wine with full metadata — grape varieties, region, classification, alcohol, sweetness, and producer — gets a far more precise prediction.

This is where enriching your wines makes a real difference. By adding missing details to your wine entries, you're not just improving the database — you're improving the accuracy of your own drinking windows.

Enrich for accuracy

If a wine shows a very broad drinking window, it likely means OENARI is missing key data. Check the wine's details and fill in what you can — grape varieties and classification have the biggest impact.

Where You'll See It

The suggested drinking window appears on the wine detail view as a reference point — a starting suggestion based on data. You can also filter your wine lists by drinking window status to find wines that are ready now, still aging, or past peak.

My Drinking Window

Alongside the suggested window, every wine has a My Drinking Window — and this one is yours to set. Maybe you prefer younger wines, or you know from experience that a particular producer peaks earlier than the algorithm suggests. My Drinking Window lets you override the suggestion with your own judgment.

This is the drinking window that drives the rest of OENARI. When you set My Drinking Window on a wine:

  • Home screen module — Wines approaching or inside your personal window show up in the "Ready to Drink" overview (Supporter and above).
  • Smart notices — You receive notifications when wines enter your personal peak window (Premium).
  • Intelligent cellar — OENARI uses your personal windows to suggest which bottles to open next.

If you don't set My Drinking Window, OENARI falls back to the suggested window. But for the most accurate and personalized experience, setting your own window on wines you care about gives you full control.

Use both together

Let the suggested window guide you as a starting point, then set My Drinking Window when you have your own opinion about a wine's peak. The suggestion is data — your window is experience.

Video Walkthrough

A video walkthrough of the drinking window feature will be available here soon.