Vintage. Vintage? What is "vintage"? The word vintage is being thrown around all over the place these days and many of the usages I'm hearing are completely inappropriate. Vintage basically means the grape harvest from one particular year. Vintage is not used to describe a good wine as opposed to bad or inferior wine. There is no "vintage Australia". One does not drink "fine vintage". One may drink a fine vintage though. There are great vintages and there are bad ones. Vintages diferentiate from year to year just like the weather does. The harvest, the growing season, the rainfall differs from year to year so the quality of each vintage differs. And the quality of a vintage in one place varies from the quality of a vintage in another place. The weather in central California in a particular year may be rainy where as the weather in Napa or Sonoma may be fabulous. The grapes and then the wine produced will reflect those differences. When it comes to grapes and wines produced, the weather for a vineyard at the top of one hill will vary from the weather at the bottom of the hill. Combine that with water drainage and sun exposure and you can have two completely different wines from the same region AND the same vintage. Also on the subject of vintage; a wine can not be declared from one particular vintage unless a certain percentage of the grapes in the wine come from that particular vintage. Some regions require all the grapes to be from one particular vintage. Other places declare that only 75 or 80 or 85% of the grapes be from that vintage. If you see a wine that's non-vintage then that means it's blended with juice from multiple years.
So, the average wine drinker may ask, what does this have to do with me? I know what I like and I know what I don't. Well, say you really like a particular wine and you drink it all spring and part of the summer and then you go out and buy a case of it and find you no longer like it? What happened? Possibly you drank yourself out of your enjoyment of it but also possibly the wine changed vintage. Your market or your wine shop (as well as the distributor & winery) has sold out of the wonderful 2007 and now has in the lesser 2008 vintage. All I'm trying to share is an understanding of what a vintage is and that even the casual wine drinker should try and take note of what vintage a wine is when you enjoy one in particular. It may save you from an unpleasant suprise.
Eat well, drink well, live well.
Howard Bernstein
Owner, Casa di Vino
Wine and Food Guy
Des Moines Wine & Food Connection
Thanks for sharing this information.A wine stored for many years will definitely taste better but it is essential to store in a proper cellar with temperature control.
Posted by: Solomon | June 28, 2011 at 12:52 AM