Go to www.cellartracker.com and all your questions will be answered. This is an excellent site that has become the most popular wine website in the world for managing your cellar. There are hundreds of reviews on thousands of different wines, so you’ll be able to decide when it’s time to crack each bottle.

With wine, as with many things, timing is everything. Drink a wine too early and it may not be ready to reveal its full potential. Wait until it is too old and it won’t have the energy it once did.

But fine wines can be very odd creatures. I remember opening a 30-year-old red Burgundy at a family dinner and it smelled and tasted terrible. I thought it was dead and we’d waited too long, so I started pouring several bottles of it down the sink. I ended up leaving some wine in one of the bottles and, out of curiosity, tasted it the next day. It had evolved into one of the greatest red Burgundies I’ve ever had.