eli5: What about the taste of wine actually gets better with age? Articles online describe flavor can improve over time, but not what about the flavor changes.
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Most wine that improves with age contains tannins either from the grape seeds and skin, or the oak in the barrels, or both.
Tannins are a class of chemicals that includes very simple compounds and much more complex ones. The simple ones tend to be very bitter (they’re that flavor in unripe fruit that is bitter and makes your mouth feel painfully dry). The complex ones are flavor compounds in tobacco, fruit especially berries, chocolate, earthy mushroom flavors and most of the other flavors that wine is often compared.
Over time the simple tannins link up to create more complex tannin chemicals which take the flavor from very bitter to reminiscent of all sorts of various good things.
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