How Drinking Windows Work

“When should I drink this?” is the question a wine label never answers. Sommo answers it with a window, a span of years rather than a single date, because that is how wine actually behaves. A great Barolo from Nebbiolo does not become “ready” on one Tuesday and “over” on another. It climbs, plateaus, and declines. The window describes the whole arc.

Why a window, not a year

A single “drink by” year is precise and usually wrong. Wine ageing is a curve, not a deadline. Sommo describes that curve so you can plan: open the youngest bottles of a case first, hold the rest, and catch each one near its best.

The four numbers

For an age-worthy wine with a meaningful estimate, four dates together draw the curve:

• Drink from. The earliest the wine is worth opening. Before this, it is likely closed or too firm.
• Peak from. The start of the sweet spot, when the wine is showing well.
• Peak until. The end of the plateau, the last of its best years.
• Drink until. The outer edge, after which it is likely fading.

You do not have to read four dates every time. Sommo turns them into one plain status.

How the status changes

As each year ticks over, a wine moves through five states, and your rack colours change to match:

• Too Young. Before the drink-from date. Patience pays.
• Approaching. Nearly there, enjoyable now, better soon.
• Ready Now. Inside the peak. This is the bottle to open tonight.
• Declining. Past the plateau but still drinking.
• Past Prime. Likely beyond its best on consensus.

This is the same model the cellar uses for its colour coding and for its drinking window alerts on iOS, Android and HarmonyOS: Prime Drinking Window, At Its Best, Open Soon and Past Peak. No streaks, no nagging, just a nudge when one of your wines is ready.

What Sommo looks at

The window is an estimate from the wine itself, weighing:

• Structure: tannin, acidity and concentration, the scaffolding that lets a wine age.
• Grape and region: a Nebbiolo from Piedmont and a Pinot Noir from Burgundy age on very different schedules.
• Vintage quality: a strong year ages longer than a dilute one.
• Producer style: some houses build for the long haul, others for early charm.

Vintage intelligence

A vintage is not just a number on the label. The same wine from two years can want a decade between their windows. Sommo factors in what the vintage means: its overall quality, its character, and notable growing-season conditions. This is the same enrichment that runs after a label scan, so a scanned bottle and a cellared one speak the same language.

How sure Sommo is

Not every estimate deserves the same confidence, so Sommo shows one. High, medium or low. A wide window with low confidence is honest uncertainty, not vagueness: it means the wine could go several ways and you should taste as you go rather than trust a narrow date. I would rather show you a broad, candid range than a tight, false one.

What Sommo assumes

The baseline window assumes good, stable cellaring, roughly cellar temperature and away from heat and light. Heat, temperature swings and bright light can shorten a wine’s life, sometimes dramatically. Recording storage gives context; it does not measure the temperatures a bottle experienced or repair earlier damage.

In the cellar, each bottle has a storage setting (standard, verified ideal, cold, warm, fluctuating, unknown history or compromised), and any setting other than standard or verified ideal shifts its window. Once you have rated at least 3 vintage wines of the same grape as Solid Choice or Would Buy Again, windows for that grape can shift by up to 2 years. Read the adjusted window alongside its confidence. Missing storage history and sparse tasting notes still leave uncertainty. An adjustment is a bounded estimate, not a laboratory assessment of your bottle.

A conceptual input and output example

For an age-worthy wine, keep these kinds of information distinct. This conceptual example explains how to read an estimate without predicting dates for a real bottle:

The acquisition date, a storage record and a dated tasting observation describe different things. Buying an older wine today does not restart its ageing clock. A changed window does not establish financial value or guarantee that a damaged bottle will last longer.

Your part

Your own glass is useful evidence. If you have a case, open one bottle early and record the date and your impression in your journal. Compare those notes as you open later bottles. One rating is an observation about that tasting, not enough evidence to personalise every wine’s window. Your preferences may also differ between grapes; the palate-learning explanation covers the broader role of tasting history.

Where it stops

A drinking window is a forecast, and forecasts have limits:

• The cork lottery. A single faulty cork can end a wine early, and no model can see that coming.
• Storage before you owned it. Any storage setting other than standard or verified ideal shifts a bottle’s window, but Sommo cannot see how a bottle was kept before it reached you. A bottle baked in a warm flat ages faster than the same wine in a cool cellar.
• Consensus versus your palate. Windows start from broad agreement about a wine; once you have rated at least 3 vintage wines of the same grape as Solid Choice or Would Buy Again, windows for that grape can shift by up to 2 years. If you love older, savoury bottles or fresh, primary fruit, your ideal moment may sit earlier or later than the crowd’s.

The full picture of what Sommo can and cannot know is on the limitations page.

In the app

Drinking windows live in the wine cellar: every wine gets a drinking window, adjusted for each bottle’s storage and your palate, shown on a timeline, with rack colours that shift as wines ripen and drinking window alerts on iOS, Android and HarmonyOS. Wine Insights rolls the same window data up across your collection: how many bottles are too young, approaching peak, ready now, or past prime, with a cellar segment AI reading on top. For a wider look at how Sommo compares to dedicated cellar tools, see the best wine cellar apps on the blog, or my honest take on Sommo versus CellarTracker. Collectors get the most from it: here is Sommo for wine collectors.

Frequently asked.