Why wait?

I'm trying a recipe that says to let my wine remain in the carboy for 3 months before bottling. It's only been about a month and a half, but fermentation stopped and the wine has clarified beautifully. Is there any reason I can't go ahead and bottle it now?

IME wine that looks clarified still has a good bit of solids that can settle out. But, lets say you used clarifiers and it is bright. You still have the oxidation issue. If you plan on letting it age a long time before drinking the amount of oxidation it can pick up from a small headspace in a carboy is much less than the headspace in 30 bottles amounts to. You also have considerations such as barrel aging and/or oaking that will take some time and justify long bulk storage.

Ok, thanks. I'll stretch my patience and wait.

Here is the analogy I give to people about aging wine.

Wine is like potato salad. When you make it, it tastes like potatoes, onions, celery and mayo. After a day it starts to taste like potato salad, after 2 days it really gets good, but by then...its all gone and you can't taste it any more.

Wine is the same way, day 1...it tastes like grapes, yeast, tannins, etc. day 30 it starts to taste like wine, day 180 it is now a good tasting wine. The beauty of waiting is that, unlike the potato salad, you have all of it to taste for a while. And most wines just keep getting better.

Even though the wine looks clear, I"d suggest racking it and topping up and waiting 60 days.

If there are NO new lees at all in 60 days, then it can be bottled. That's always been my indicator when a wine is probably not going to throw anymore lees- 60 days.

Thanks, all. I understand it needs to age, just want sure if there were specific reasons to age it in the carboy as opposed to bottles. I'll wait awhile longer and make sure nothing more settles out.