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Sponsored listings for Denver Wines: Wine Wintage |
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Vintage, in wine-making, is the process of picking grapes and creating
the finished product. A vintage wine is one made from grapes that were
all, or primarily, grown and harvested in a single specified year. In
certain wines it can denote quality, as in Port wine, 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 year denoted on the label. In Chile and South Africa, the
requirement is 75 percent same-year content for vintage-dated
wine.[1][2] In Australia, New Zealand, and the member states of the
European Union the requirement is 85 percent.[3][4][5] In the United
States the requirement is 85%, unless the wine is designated with an AVA,
(e.g., Russian River Valley), in which case it is 95%. Technically, the
85% 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. This is a common practice
for winemakers seeking a consistent style of wine, year on year.
The effect of vintage disputed
Vintage near Sorrento, Italy, Jacob Philipp Hackert, c. 1784.The
importance of vintage, however, is both varied and disputed.
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 for people to drink. On the other
hand, a poor growing season can lead to grapes low in sugar, which
lowers the quality of the resulting wine. |
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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 from average vintages. This
is especially the case if wines are likely to improve further with some
age in the bottle. Some wines are only labeled with a vintage in
better-than-average years, to maintain their quality and reputation,
while the vast majority of wines are produced to be drunk young and
fresh. In such cases, a vintage is usually considered less important.
However, it can serve to protect consumers against buying a wine that
wouldn't be expected to improve with age and could be past its best,
such as with
Beaujolais nouveau, a wine style made to be consumed within
months of its bottling.
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) and Bill Marsano wrote that “winemakers now have
the technology and skills to make good and even very good wines in
undistinguished years” (Marsano). The Wine Spectator's James Laube has
asserted that "even an average vintage can yield some grand wines" (Laube).
Roman Weil, co-chairman of the Oenonomy Society of the US and Professor
at the University of Chicago, where you can read his bio, tested the
controversial hypotheses that experienced wine drinkers "cannot
distinguish in blind tastings the wine of years rated high from those of
years rated low, or, if they can, they do not agree with the vintage
chart’s preferences” (Weil).
Dr. Weil used wines ranging from four to 17 years beyond their vintage
with 240 wine drinkers and found that the tasters couldn’t distinguish
between wines of good and bad vintages, except for Bordeaux wines. And
even when they could make a distinction, the match between the tasters'
individual assessments and the charts' rankings were little better than
tossing a coin. When the tests were replicated with wine experts
including French wine academics, the results were again the same as
chance.
Many critics believe that Bordeaux has the world’s largest variance in
vintages.[citation needed] Indeed, Weil found that "tasters can
distinguish the Excellent from the Appalling one, even if they didn’t
agree with which is the Appalling one."
Weil doesn’t consider a vintage chart to be useless. He suggests using
one to help "find good buys in wine. Buy wine from the Appalling years,"
which may be priced far below actual quality.
The subject of the importance of vintage is one about which disagreement
can be expected to continue.
Miscellaneous
In Spain, wine regulators publish official classifications of each
vintage.
A common Bordelais saying is "The best vintage is the vintage we have to
sell" (Greene).
Vintage can also mean of or pertaining to the vine.
Vintage has also become a word used to describe an action typical of a
particular person, for example "thats vintage toothill"
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