Every day when I speak to friends and customers I am reminded how complex the world of wine is. As I've mentioned in previous posts there are ways to simplify wine and build knowledge, but it strikes me there is one defining aspect to wine that applies universally - its vintage.
Many people assume vintages are complex and don't even try to understand how the date on the bottle can affect its quality or price. Let's clear up the basics. The vintage when describing wine is simply the year the grapes were harvested. Every still wine has a vintage and the year should be displayed somewhere on the label. This is not to be confused with "Vintage" Champagne. Non-vintage Champagne is often blended from several different years' production and so doesn't display a year on the label. In exceptional years some makers will offer prestige Vintage Champagne made of grapes exclusively from that year and this will be labeled accordingly. A similar classification system is used for Vintage Port and both are more expensive than non-vintage.
Back to still wine. If you drink the type of branded wine that can be found in every supermarket it is unlikely to vary from year to year - as this is exactly what the makers are aiming for. Other wines that are more characteristic of their region and grape variety will certainly vary each year and it's worth understanding this. It's probably fair to start with a couple of generalisations. Most white wine can be enjoyed young and will not improve much, if at all with age. Most red wine will improve with a bit of age as this allows time for the sharp tannins to soften. However, all wine goes off eventually.
The next step is to understand that some years provide near perfect conditions for wine growing, while other years can be average or poor. Unfortunately these weather conditions can be quite localised so that a great vintage in France may not be so good in Spain. And the same goes for different regions within the same country.
Once you're aware of vintages you will be amazed at how many restaurants display specific vintages on their wine list but will serve you a younger wine without comment. If I ordered a bottle of 2005 red Bordeaux from a wine list and the waiter arrived with a 2007 I would ask to choose something else - because I happen to know that 2005 was a much better year than 2007. I'm not always that fussy. Wines from warmer climates such as Argentina or southern Italy tend to be more consistent, so the winemaker is arguably more important than the vintage.
Unless you have a savant-like memory for these things it's unlikely you will be able to remember the good, the bad and the ugly vintages for multiple wine regions. So the easy thing to do it to look it up (see link below for a good vintage chart). It might then be worth trying to remember the good recent vintages for your favourite type of red wine so you will be armed with this knowledge next time you are perusing a wine list in a restaurant.
If you want to get more sophisticated you can also layer on the 'approachability' of the vintage. Put simply an approachable vintage is one that reaches its peak reasonably young. For example 2005 was a great year for red Bordeaux but it has taken many years to reach maturity, whereas 2009 is also a great vintage for red Bordeaux but it already tastes good now.
Happy vintage hunting...
www.erobertparker.com/newsearch/vintagechart1.aspx
www.hedonistwines.co.uk
