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Taste any old wines over the holidays? I gather many of you did. Your urgent inquiries regarding the potential vigour of certain vintages were more numerous this December than in previous years.

It got me wondering. Were Canadians dipping into existing inventory to spare their overworked credit cards? Or were they symbolically thumbing their noses at the recession by uncorking extravagance?

Probably both.

Me, I enjoyed a few mouldy oldies as well. But just as noteworthy, I didn't enjoy a few. As dusty bottles so often do, some managed to disappoint. I mean really disappoint. They were, to put it bluntly, dead. Goners. Kaput. They had gone from cellar straight to grave.

I bring this to light in the interest of equal time. Collectors and wine critics are forever blathering on about how they got to taste some amazing ancient claret or unctuous old riesling as though aged wine were synonymous with Nirvana. Here's the thing, though. They rarely go on about the duds.

And when it comes to wine older than, say, 15 years, duds are not just an exception, they are a serious hazard. This is the case even with bottles kept in the most expensive, well-maintained cellars. (For an enlightening look at the absurdity of old-wine appreciation, consider reading last year's The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace, in particular the chapter titled Salad Dressing.)

Even when a wine is certifiably exhibiting rigor mortis, many collectors - having sunk serious money into their inventory - will describe the liquid in euphemistic code. Examples: "heady balsamic notes," "stewed prunes," and my favourite, "faded flowers." Translation: pushing up daisies.

There simply are no bragging rights talking about wasted cash. Unless you don't take yourself too seriously, a quality regrettably in short supply among trophy-wine collectors.

Well, not all collectors. One of the most candid, and passionate, oenophiles I know is Ian D'Agata, director of the International Wine Academy in Rome, a popular club and meeting place near the famous steps of the Piazza di Spagna. A pediatrician by training (he still practises half a day a week), he also authored an excellent little paperback just made available in North America called The Ecco Guide to the Best Wines of Italy.

Dr. D'Agata and I got together for dinner with a group of acquaintances, including Roberto Martella, owner of Grano restaurant, before Christmas to blow the cobwebs off some of the doctor's old wines and hoist a few glasses to the season. Most of the bottles had been stored in his well-maintained private cellar in Toronto. (He used to live in the city and visits often.) All had been purchased directly by the doctor, some in the United States and some in Canada.

By my tally, the lopsided score among dry wines was six to two in favour of the grim grape reaper. (Four sweet wines, which generally tend to age more slowly than dry wines because of sugar's preservative quality, fared much better.)

Still very much alive and totally sublime was Sassicaia 1982, the great cabernet sauvignon. Weather in Tuscany that year was not as favourable as it was three years later, a season that produced what many have called Italy's greatest red wine ever, Sassicaia 1985. But the 1982 was in glorious condition, still round and seamless, with nuances of tobacco and leather peeking out from its fruity, luscious core.

The other survivor was Chateau Cantenac Brown 1982, a respected third-growth from Bordeaux - not the Derek Jeter or Sidney Crosby of French reds, but very much a big-league player. I doubt the wine had much longer to flourish, though, because the fruit was starting to crest and become ever-so-slightly flat. Good as it was, I suspect I would have enjoyed it more five years ago.

I know that's looking a gift horse in the palate, but Dr. D'Agata encourages honest observations, and dispenses them accordingly, especially when the wines are his.

"I rarely get caught with wines that are over the hill in my cellar, because I enjoy wine so much [that] I tend to drink it up fairly quickly," he told me some days after the tasting. "That said, I was surprised myself at how poorly some of the wines had aged."

He referred in particular to two 1992 white Burgundies that clearly had bought the farm long ago, specifically Christian Moreau Les Clos des Hospices and Domaine Ramonet Chassagne-Montrachet Morgeot. True, 1992 was not a great year for Burgundy, but good white Burgundy is intended for cellaring and these were two producers and vineyards with great pedigree. They should have delivered more after 16 years of coddling.

Dr. D'Agata says the poor showing only reinforced his conviction, born of extensive experimentation, that white Burgundies don't age as well as some collectors have been persuaded to believe. He sampled another bottle of the 1992 Ramonet Morgeot, taken from the same bin in his cellar, five days later and it was similarly flat and oxidized, showing very little fruit. His conclusion is that you have to do extensive research to keep up to date on which white Burgundies can go the distance. Knowing the producer's reputation, contrary to popular opinion, is not enough; you have to know the track record of that producer with respect to each small vineyard from which the grapes in your bottle are sourced.

Dr. D'Agata said he later opened a third white Burgundy from the same producer, Ramonet, but from a different vineyard, Boudriottes, from the 1992 vintage and it "was fabulous and still could have lasted a few more years."

That experiment also pretty much laid to rest the possibility - often cited in such cases - that the first Ramonet Morgeot might have been off because of "bottle variation." That's a catch-all term trotted out to explain why one bottle didn't age the way it "should" have, especially when compared with a similar bottle from the same case stored side by side. Bottle variation can result from any number of factors, including invisible flaws in the cork seal and excess oxygen accidentally acquired in bottling.

Two of Dr. D'Agata's German rieslings, another category of white wine reputed to age beautifully, were, in his own word, "disappointing." In this case, he had reason to suspect they were stored poorly by the Boston store from which he purchased them 14 years ago. They were, for the record, Schloss Johannisberger Riesling Grunlack 1983 and Hohe Domkirche Scharzhofberger Riesling 1983.

Most disappointing, certainly to me, were two Barolos, a style of wine generally intended for many decades of cellaring thanks to the nebbiolo grape's high acidity and tannin content, two factors that help curb oxidation. I almost wept over the cadaverous state of the Aldo Conterno Colonnello Barolo 1982, a rare red that would cost about $300 and had been stored under ideal conditions. "The wine was so shockingly off that I opened that one again too [several days later] and it was a thing of beauty," Dr. D'Agata said. "So, in that case it really was a case of bottle variation."

A second Barolo, Ceretto's Barolo Bricco Rocche 1982, exhibited fruit flavours that were too thin and dried out to be called enjoyable, unless you happen to be what Dr. D'Agata calls a vinous necrophiliac.