There are two main reasons to buy young wine to age: to ensure you have the wines you want, which may be unavailable in shops when they reach maturity; and to control the cellaring conditions. Of lesser importance is the possible financial saving and/or profit.
Beyond these reasons is the basic question: will the wine age well? The list on groups wines according to their likely keeping time. It should be remembered that vintages play a big part in the ability of wines to age.
Most wines in an ageing cellar will be red. Fewer white wines need time to mature. Most wine buyers tall into a pattern of buying white wines as they need them, and using storage space (and money) on red and fortified wines. Remember the rule about buying young what cannot be bought old. Each region has some wines that are made in small amounts, and are in great demand. Buy these young, or not at all unless you can pay a premium price. Examples are clarets such as Chateau Petrus, California's currently fashionable Cabernets, the best domaine-bottled burgundies. There are only 7,000 bottles of Romanee-Conti a year, and the whole world wants them. Most classed-growth clarets are made on a much larger scale and can be bought through the wine trade later in their lives. At the other end of the spectrum, minor wines from obscure districts can be worth cellaring and they should be bought when found, for they rarely appear on merchants' lists.
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