Many people who are not experienced with wine share a common misconception about Vintage Wine. Many think that labeling it Vintage automatically means ‘old’ and high quality, however this does not always ring true. In the wine industry, a vintage wine is a wine that has been made by grapes grown and collected from one particular season.

The idea may have originated from the producers of Vintage Port in who make ports based off grapes from certain years, which are later analyzed and the ‘good years’ are then decided. These are then labeled as a ‘Vintage Port’ which denotes that the particular year or batch was of particularly high quality.

Vintage wines share some of the aspects of Vintage Ports but only a few. In the same fashion as Vintage Port, Vintage wines are made using only the grapes from a select year, however this does not mean the wine will be better in taste or quality. The wine community then samples the wines and connoisseurs then debate over the quality and which years yielded the best wines.

Vintage wines do not have to consist of 100% of grapes from one particular year. Some wines originating from South Africa or Chilie are only required to consist of 75% same year grapes. In other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, America and the EU, they are required to be 85% and up.
Non-vintage labeled wines are free to use grapes from harvests including two years or more. Wine makers seeking to produce wines that retain consistent styles of wine over the years use this method.

There is still heated debate in the wine community as to whether vintage is still a relevant and accurate gauge of quality, with one side arguing that good seasons produce riper and better tasting grapes, while the other side that modern farming methods and controlled irrigation have now rendered vintage stamping obsolete.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 10:06 am and is filed under Food and Drink: Wine Spirits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.