Barrels & Bottles

What makes a Vintage

An article by John Higgins for Derbyshire Times Elite magazine

What makes a vintage wine! Any wine from a single harvest can be called a vintage from most wine producing regions around the world. If you see a date on the label then it is a vintage wine. This date is of particular importance as it tells you when the wine is ready for drinking and how it should be drunk at any moment in time.

What one must remember is that a wine is a natural living product and changes with time. The amount of change may be very subtle over a 10 year period (as with a Bordeaux) or considerable in a short period (as with a New World Merlot). The key is to know your vintages and look for a good year. So, what makes a good vintage! The vintage is primarily down to the local weather conditions and even the micro-climate of each specific vineyard. May is the danger month for frost damage, and on very clear nights stoves are lit to prevent severe damage to the budding vines.

The vines start to flower at the beginning of June when the temperatures reach 18 -20 degrees Celsius. The weather is absolutely critical- the warmer and calmer the better, but not too hot to burn the vines. The harvest in September is the make or break time. It is always a fine balancing act between hoping and waiting for more sun to further ripen the bunches of grapes, or else picking before the rains start. Quite often neighbouring vineyards will have completely different wines due to crop damage by September rains. A good vintner can salvage a poor year crippled by the weather but he cannot make a silk purse out of a pig's ear!

Regions such as Champagne and Port often declare a vintage. These are wines made in exceptional years where the quality attains a very high standard and can be said to be typical of a wine from the area. Declared vintages always demand a higher price than their non-vintage counterparts due to their ageing potential and the overall finesse and quality. Although they would like to declare each year as a vintage they do show surprising self-restraint to protect their name and the quality of the brand.

Vintage wines show inherent abilities for ageing potential. These make great investment wines for the future, for either drinking oneself at their peak or selling on at a profit. The best advice is to buy when the wine is young. from the noted makers and from the top vintages.

A word of caution, though, to anyone regarding the 2000 vintage which is being offered around at the moment. Although the vintage is looking good it has been very much over-hyped by the producers hoping to cash in on the magical '00' vintage on the label. Reports of Chateau Mouton Rothschild fetching three times the usual price on the internet to unsuspecting buyers are all too common at the moment. My advice is to buy classified growths and don't pay over the odds from unknown sources. The market should level out over the next 12 months and some real 2000 vintage bargains should be around to be snapped up.

Vintage Charts shows a general guide to the vintages that are on wine merchants' shelves at the moment. This should be used as a general rule of thumb. As we have seen, neighbouring vineyards can have completely different wines due to as little as a seven day difference in picking times! " It is always best to ask your wine merchant about each specific wine for a true indication of the relative quality. Better still, why not undertake a vertical testing (a tasting of wines from the same estate but different vintages) to discover the nuances between them.