Only a few wines have the ability to significantly improve with age. Master of Wine Jancis Robinson notes that only around the top 10% of all red wine and top 5% of all white wines can improve significantly enough with age to make drinking more enjoyable at 5 years of age than at 1 year of age. Also, in my humble opinion, if you need to age a wine it might not be the wine for you?
Bottle sickness: One of the short-term aging needs of wine is a period where the wine is considered "sick" due to the trauma and volatility of the bottling or shipping experience. During bottling some oxygen is exposed to the wine, causing a domino effect of chemical reaction with various components of the wine. The time it takes for the wine to settle down and have the oxygen fully dissolve and integrate with the wine is considered its period of "bottle shock". During this time the wine could taste drastically different than it did prior to bottling or how it will taste after the wine has settled. While many modern bottling lines try to treat the wine as gently as possible and utilize inert gases to minimize the amount of oxygen exposure, all wine goes through some period of bottle shock. The length of this period will vary with each individual wine.
Dumb phase: During the course of aging a wine may slip into a "dumb phase" where its aromas and flavors are very muted. In Bordeaux this phase is called the age ingrat or "difficult age" and is likened to a teenager going through adolescence. The cause or length of time that this "dumb phase" will last is not yet fully understood and seems to vary from bottle to bottle.
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