Vintage Matters So Pay Attention

By Larry Davidson; Sommelier © 2008 All Rights Reserved.

I read an article (actually several) not long ago which argued that vintage doesn’t matter anymore. The author (an idiot who will remain unnamed) proposed that the quality and technology of winemaking in today’s world is so high and precise that vintage is no longer a factor in producing excellent wine. In fact, this seems to be a new trend in wine writing with many idiots following suit because it is the "new" think – vintage is unimportant. I cry foul, nonsense, bullshit!

This position – that all wines are just fine no matter the vintage - can actually ring true, but only for the insipid mass-produced, mass-bottled wines which are ubiquitous on every grocery and convenience store shelving. You know the ones - boring corporate wines that are always the same, no matter what vagaries Mother Nature deals to the vineyard on an annual basis. When not shamefully hidden on the bottom 3 shelves these wines are stacked up four boxes high, six boxes wide and five deep with a low price and garish shelf talkers to move them out the door quickly. Those wines, (I could name many but would probably be sued for defamation, even though it’s true) while quaffable fermented grape juice, bear absolutely no relationship to the real wines of the world – the handcrafted wines made with passion and respect for what the annual challenges that an agriculture product poses to production.

So what is a vintage wine and why is vintage important? For wine geeks and freaks, vintage is the all-important bellwether. For the rest of us, vintage is a productive nuisance that needs to be dealt with on its annual basis. The quick spin is: the vintage of a wine indicates the year that the grapes were harvested to make that bottle in your hand. There is always a lag of at least a year from the vintage of the harvest (except in the case of Beaujolais Nouveau, Vihno Verde and a few others,) to when you see the bottle on the shelf.

What makes a vintage poor vs. great? You think your job is stressful? Check this out. Vintage has so many elements that it is easy to appreciate what the winemaker and vineyard manager have to deal with every day of the year. Every year the vintage characteristic is created by the land, climate and weather (when you put all of that together it is what the French call Terroir – a term that has no direct translation to English.) Their concerns are not just your average everyday kind of "is it going to rain today?" issues, but each element poses a daily threat or reward. High and low temperatures, moisture accumulation (rain, humidity, frost, dew and more) or lack thereof, air flow patterns in each vineyard, sunshine intensity – too much and too little at any given time, wind factors, storm watches, airborne pests from fungi, mold and bacteria to birds, and more. These all have to be accounted for each and every day.
For a great vintage year when everything goes according to plan the vigneron need only coax the perfect balance of ripeness in each grape – when sugars, acids, and the phenolic tannin compounds of the skins and stems are all in ripe balance. This is a minute-by-minute decision at harvest. When all the stars align, making great wine is somewhat easy.

However, when things don’t work in favor of a good vintage the resulting wine can show many different poor vintage qualities including but not limited to: over-ripeness resulting in a cooked "jammy" tasting high-alcohol wine; thin green wine with herbal and vegetal notes; low fruit – high acid wines out of balance (or vice versa,) and more.

What does all this mean for you, the consumer? As with all things there are caveats!

1. Good producers can and will produce decent wines in poor vintages and you can usually pick them up for a bargain. Seek these out. If you don’t know of any oat the moment, write me and I’ll point you in a good direction.

2. Vintage releases should be used as a guideline and not an absolute – after all, to err is human and there are many poor wines produced in good vintage years.

3. Some regions are more prone to vintage vagaries than others: The extremes on either end of cool and warm climates tend to have harsher quality swings due to vintage attributes.

So where does that leave you – the wine lover who doesn’t want to become an encyclopedia of wine arcana? Remember that vintage charts are helpful but not the total solution (there are many available for free on the internet.) Wine is subjective and one man’s gem is another’s kitchen sink swill. Learn to trust both your palate and the palate and experience of your local wine merchant but only if you know that they taste the wines that they carry – supermarkets are not your best bet because they carry way too many wines to have tasted through even a fraction of them – if they are allowed to taste at all! The most important rule of course is that your palate is your guide – you may enjoy a particular style of wine that others find uninteresting for one or more reasons.

Vintage matters more than most are willing to admit – just ask any winemaker who has lost an entire crop or benefited from a perfect year in the vineyard. Better yet, find identical bottles from the same vineyard and producer (not mass produced juice) but with different vintages and see for yourself how different vintages can be side by side – you’ll "get it" immediately. After all – wine is supposed to be interesting! Don’t let those corporate swill-producers con you into thinking that the wine they make is supposed to be the only vision of perfect wine with each and every passing vintage. If they don’t take the risk of producing a truly great wine at the expense of having an off year, well… they are NOT your friend and they do NOT make good wine – they make a commodity, like tires or relay switches or gum and where’s the romance and excitement in that?

Vintage matters more now than ever; pay attention to it and you’ll reap your rewards over and over again.