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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 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 maturity algorithm that evaluates a range of parameters for each wine. Based on these inputs, it calculates:

  • 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.

A wine needs a vintage to get a window. Non-vintage wines and wines without a known year get none.

What the Algorithm Considers

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

  • Grape varieties — Different grapes age at vastly different rates. A Nebbiolo ages differently from a Gamay. For blends, the main grape weighs most.
  • Wine color and style — Red, white, rosé, orange, amber, sparkling, fortified, and dessert wines all follow different maturity curves. Still rosé is capped at a few years; sparkling wine depends on whether it's vintage Champagne, other Champagne, or another sparkling wine.
  • Region and appellation — Wines from certain regions tend to have longer or shorter aging potential.
  • Classification — Grand Cru, Premier Cru, Reserva, and other quality indicators are factored in.
  • Alcohol content — A weak signal, used differently for white and red wines.
  • Sweetness level — Residual sugar acts as a preservative and extends aging potential.
  • Bottle size — A magnum ages more slowly than a standard bottle, a half bottle faster.
  • Vintage quality — Where OENARI has a vintage report for the wine's region and year, a strong or weak year moves the window.
  • Vintage — The starting year anchors the entire calculation.

When a wine has no grape varieties, OENARI falls back to a window for its colour and style. Amber wines — vin jaune, oxidative sherries, aged Tokaji, Madeira — use a long fallback of 5 to 30 years.

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, and sweetness — 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

  • Wine page — A bar from young through peak to declining, with a marker for now and a status: Too young, Approaching, Drink soon, At peak, Declining or Past peak. If you own the wine, the page shows the vintage you own (the oldest, if you have several), and your own window when you've set one.
  • Bottle details Supporter — The window on a bottle's detail sheet, from your wine lists or the rack grid.
  • Home Supporter — The Ready to drink and Past peak overviews.
  • Wine lists — Filter by Drinking Window: Ready to drink, Hold, or Past peak.

My Drinking Window

Alongside the suggested window, every bottle can have 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.

To set it, open the bottle's Edit screen and fill in From and To under My Drinking Window. It's set per bottle, so two bottles of the same wine can have different windows.

This is the drinking window that drives the rest of OENARI. When you set My Drinking Window on a bottle, it's used:

  • On the wine page — Shown as Your window instead of the suggested one.
  • On the Home screen — In Ready to drink and Past peak (Supporter and above).
  • In SmartCellar — What should I drink next? plans your bottles with your windows (Premium).
  • In the e-mail digest — Reminders list the bottles in your windows (Supporter and above).

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.