Vintage Wines Introduction

What is a vintage wine?

In popular usage, “vintage” has come to mean a wine of high quality, usually old, and often expensive. While this is a commonly understood term, it’s not strictly accurate. A vintage wine is, properly speaking, a wine that is made purely, or primarily, from the harvest of a single year’s grapes – in contrast to non-vintage or blended wines, which may incorporate grapes grown over more than a single year. This latter technique has advantages in terms of consistency, but it is unlikely to yield a wine of the very highest quality.

As a result, a vintage wine label will always have a year printed on it, and will usually, though not always, hail from a single vineyard.


What makes a good vintage wine?

This, of course, is the sixty-four thousand dollar question. Many factors combine to make a good vintage wine. First and foremost, winemakers will normally use their best grapes from their top quality vineyards to make a prized vintage wine, and so they are using the best raw materials in the manufacture of the wine. Factors that can affect the quality of the wine include the amount of sunlight and rain that the vines have received over the growing season, the quality of the soil in which the vines grow, and the skill of the winemaker himself, as well as the care the vineyards keepers put into making and fermenting their wines.




Why is a vintage wine different than a regular wine?

Vintage wines are not “different” from regular wines specifically; rather, they denote the result of a single year’s wine growth at a particular vineyard, and so normally represent a winemaker’s best product. However, this also means that vintage wines will normally be more expensive than most regular wines, but on the other hand, they can be expected to improve in the bottle and increase in value, if they are stored away for a number of years, rather than drinking immediately. The best vintage wines have deep, complex flavors that will mature and improve over time, and so will repay a few years’ patience on their owners’ part!


Do all vintage wines increase in value?

The short answer to this is no. In fact, even wines that will benefit from a few years’ storage before drinking will not necessarily be more valuable as a result. Also, many of the wines sold online and in supermarkets, even expensive wines of very good quality, are designed to be drunk while young, and they simply don’t benefit from being kept for long periods.

In general, only top quality wines from a “blue-chip” winery can be considered safe bets to increase in value, and even then only if they come from a good year. As more and more vintage wines from a given year are opened and drunk, collectors and buyers will form a more accurate view of the worth of that year, and this may lead to your carefully stored vintage wine bottle being considered second-class wine, not worth buying at all! For this reason, it’s best to be cautious when buying vintage wine with a view to selling it on in the future.


Why are some years better than others?

The quality of a vintage wine depends on many factors. Some, such as the variety of grape grown and the location, remain the same at each vineyard from year to year – many wines, particularly in Europe, are grown from vines that are over 25 years old, and sometimes, in rare cases, up to 100 years old!

The factor that will change from year to year is climate. The most important issue is temperature; in warm years, grapes will grow quicker and ripen sooner, producing better wine. Equally, vines need just the right amount of rain over the growing season; too dry, and the grapes will be small and shriveled; too wet, and they will be too plump, producing a diluted, inferior juice. Sunshine and wind, too, have a similar effect on the grapes – so as skilled as the winemaker may be, ultimately he is, like all those who make their living from the soil, dependent on the weather.


Where can you go for more information on vintage wines on the web?

You can learn more about vintage wines from Wine On The Web, which has loads of advice on choosing, appreciating, and buying vintage wine, as well as a vintage chart showing which years are worth pursuing and which are less so. The website of Decanter magazine, one of the world’s best wine magazines; and the website of Robert Parker, who is without question the most respected, influential wine critic in the world, provide excellent vintage wine information. Parker’s website has a wealth of information on vintage wines from all over the winemaking world.