Where it does help, I find, is with wines that I struggle with, those that I just can't seem to pin down. The quick solution, I suppose, would be to say to the wine 'Well, if you can't tell me who you are in the first five minutes of our relationship, I'm scoring you three and moving on.' But I don't think that's fair to the wine, or to those that have come before it and those coming after it.

They are few and far between, these wines that are unimpressive when you first draw the cork or turn the screwcap and then evolve into something quite elegant, or imposing, or complex. I am fortunate it is my duty to try and find them!

Does this give any clue as to how the wine will age? Now you've made me think. Possibly it indicates how quickly or slowly a wine will 'age', but I certainly haven't used it in the past as a base for my ageing 'predictions'. Maybe I should google this one ...

From Tim James:
Probably because I’m more indecisive than Cathy, I sometimes dither much longer than 12 hours when doing my Platter ratings – at least for those that are clearly serious, ambitious young wines. Such wines I generally make notes on and then leave till the next day, to see what has happened to them; I often find that they have improved rather – opened up, sometimes revealed the fruit lurking behind the oak or the tannins.

Occasionally a wine will be showing clear signs of ‘oxidising’ after a day, of at least ‘losing its fruit’ – and that for me is a bad sign for a young wine, and suggests that it is unlikely to evolve well in bottle. I confess I can offer not much more than gut-feeling and a bit of logic and some experience in support of my belief.

Anyway, on the basis of this I can sometimes be pushed by a half-star or so in either direction, or at least have my initial impression confirmed, or my dithering resolved. Sometimes I will even leave a wine for another day or two to see what happens to it. Certainly I have more respect for wines that can survive and even thrive.

An extreme case: I remember last year tasting the Cordoba Crescendo, a wine I know comparatively well, from the generally unsatisfactory 2002 vintage (the Helderberg was not the least affected of the areas). I was very disappointed when I opened it, and thought it was destined to a serious diminuendo in terms of scoring. But I tried it searchingly for three days, and each day it was showing better, so it remained with its default four and a half stars. Its improvement rather than deterioration over that time suggested to me that with a few years it would show itself as a very good wine – though in my opinion not likely to be among the best Crescendos. Christian Eedes and I think, of course, that Crescendo generally ages very well. This one? I’m not sure, but I’d put more confidence in it developing for five or ten years than I would if it hadn’t grown so well once opened.