Does Vintage Matter? Make It Matter To You

One of my goals when I write posts is to get you more connected to wine and spirits. Obviously, if you are reading my articles, you like to drink a good beverage and want to know more about what you just gave your liver to process. However, it's good to establish a real connection with your wines and spirits to gain an appreciation for them.

If you are one to pick up a publication like Wine Spectator, Decanter, or something along those lines, you will recognize a bunch of topics that are frequently discussed. The concept of terroir generates a lot of debate. "Rosé All Day" is a mantra meant to get you to enjoy dry pink wines all year round. However, the number one topic enthusiasts, experts, and retailers obsess over is vintage.

By the way, all the term "vintage" means is the year the grapes were harvested to make the wine in the bottle you purchased. That's it. Yet, vintage is a drum that gets beaten consistently, because every vintage experiences different weather conditions from its predecessor. Things like number of sunny days, rainfall, wind, and timing of these conditions in the growing season can all impact the health of wine grapes and the grapevines themselves. Each vintage will show different characteristics in the finished wines. For (very general) example, dry, sunny years give lots of potential alcohol and ripe fruit flavors. Rainy years might lead to lean, acidic wines. Cloudy years lead to green/unripe flavors. Hot years may show very little acid and full-bodied wines.

The majority of wines that hit the market are going to be drinkable, no matter what the vintage is. 95-98% of what you see is meant to be consumed within the first couple of years of the vintage. The remainder is built for long-haul aging in a cellar, and vintage matters a lot in this case. In order for a wine to go on and develop more interesting flavors over time, you need alcohol, acid, fruit concentration, tannin (in the case of red wines), and residual sugars (frequently needed in sweet white wines, but also important for Port). All of these elements help preserve a wine.

Wines made from Nebbiolo are great for cellaring; they are loaded with acid, tannin, alcohol, and fruit concentration. Talking to people helped me land these for my own cellar.

Now, I have a question for you: does any of what I wrote matter to you? If it does, cool. Find some wines ready to throw into your cellar. Barolo, Bordeaux, and Brunello are all suitable examples for you. If the answer is "no," that's good, too. You don't have the time to wait, or those styles of wine aren't your thing. You like dry unoaked white wines, such as Sauvignon Blanc or Arneis? Make sure you aren't buying a wine whose vintage is more than two years old. Same thing applies to rosé wines as both will lose the vibrant fruit with time.

Another approach: use the vintage to make the wine buying experience more personal. For our 10th wedding anniversary, The Greatest Wife In The World and I enjoyed a 2006 Brunello together a couple of years ago. This year, I picked up a 2008 Rioja Reserva for good friends celebrating their 10th anniversary. Here's something else for you: I recently found out the 2016 Port vintage is about to be a "declared vintage" (for more on what that means, see my Port guide! ). This means all three of my sons were born in Vintage Port years. I am buying a bottle from each vintage to enjoy when they turn 21; whether or not I include them in the drinking portion remains to be seen. Additionally, I already have a 2007 Barolo and 2011 Barbaresco on hand, since The Greatest Wife In The World is not a sweet wine fan, and we both adore Italian wine. In the coming months and years, get ready for the 2016 wines with aging potential to become available.

Certainly, doing some web research can help with your quest to find the right wine, but visiting your local wine shop and talking to the fine folks there, they can help you find a bottle in store or track it down through their distributors. Make vintages work for you, whether you are looking for a youthful/fresh/lively wine or one that can mature and go down velvety smooth. Need a handy-dandy vintage chart? Use this guide to help you. Note that all of what I discussed is simply a guide and not a hard-and-fast rulebook.

Of course, if you really get stuck, then please...reach out to me! I'm happy to get you turned on to a great wine from any vintage and price bracket. Make the vintage special to you.