Other Vintage

In wine-making, vintage is the process of picking the grapes and creating the finished product. more...

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A vintage wine is one made from grapes that were all, or primarily, grown in a single specified year. In certain wines it can denote quality, as in Port, where Port houses make and declare "vintage" Port in their best years. From this tradition a common, though incorrect, usage applies the term to any wine that is perceived to be particularly old or of a particularly high quality.

Most countries allow a vintage wine to include a portion of wine that is not from the labeled vintage. Australia, New Zealand, and the member states of the European Union require 85 percent same-year content for vintage-dated wine. In Chile and South Africa the requirement is only 75 percent. In the United States the requirement is 95%. In theory, the 95 percent rule in the United States applies equally to foreign imports, but there are obvious challenges in enforcing the regulation.

The opposite of a vintage wine is a nonvintage wine, which is usually a blend from the produce of two or more years. The importance of vintage varies.

In wine produced on the colder limits of wine production, vintage is often very important because some seasons will be much warmer and produce riper grapes and better wine. On the other hand, a poor growing season can lead to grapes low in sugar, which lowers the quality of the resulting wine.

In many wine regions, especially in the New World, growing seasons are much more uniform. In dry regions, the systematic and controlled use of irrigation also contributes to uniform vintages. However, such wines are regularly labeled by vintage because of consumer demand.

Wines of superior vintages from prestigious producers and regions will often command much higher prices than those of their average vintages. This is especially the case if wines are highly tannic and likely to age well. Some vintage wines are only made in better-than-average years. On the other hand, the vast majority of wines are produced to be drunk young and, in such cases, vintage is usually considered unimportant. However, it can serve to protect against buying a wine that cannot age well and is too old , such as a bottle of Beaujolais nouveau more than a few months old.

The importance of vintage may sometimes be exaggerated. For example, New York Times wine columnist Frank J. Prial declared the vintage chart to be dead, writing that “winemakers of the world have rendered the vintage chart obsolete” (Prial). Similarly, Bill Marsano wrote that “winemakers now have the technology and skills to make good and even very good wines in undistinguished years” (Marsano).

Roman Weil, co-chairman of the Onenonomy Society of the US, tested the controversial hypotheses that experienced wine drinkers

Read more at Wikipedia.org