Corey Pierce

People love to toss around the word “vintage.” They use it for clothes, records and cars, but when it comes to wine the word takes on a whole new meaning. In wine-speak, vintage doesn’t mean old or collectible, it simply refers to the year.

The word is often misused by consumers when trying to refer to a good year or a “vintage year,” a term reserved solely for the Port wines of the Douro Valley in Portugal. When it comes to table wines, any wine bearing a year on the label can be referred to as a vintage wine, but this in no way speaks to the wine’s inherent qualities; it only means that the fruit contained in the wine was harvested in the stated year. So, why do wineries put vintages on the label and what information are consumers supposed to glean by knowing the year in which the wine was made?

Vintages are put on wines for a variety of reasons. In days gone by, blending grapes from different years to make wine was a more popular practice as consistent crops were much less common. Putting a vintage on your label let people know your wine was made from grapes of a single year, which added an expectation of quality. Today, with modern technology, there are fewer disasters in the vineyards and most wineries can produce something every year. Putting a vintage on the label has become the norm and tells us nothing about a wine’s quality.

A vintage can tell you a lot about a wine before you ever commit to buying it — you just need a little background knowledge to help you interpret the information. Because wine is a product of nature and each season is unique, you can expect some variation in every year. For simple, everyday drinking wines, you usually want to buy the most recent vintage; this is especially true with white wines. If you are searching for clean, fresh flavours, the youngest wine possible is usually the best idea.

Some simple reds from the old world can benefit from a little time in the bottle, but I would be suspicious of sub-$20 wines with more than five years under their belts. For wines to age effectively and take on complexity they need to be stored properly, so sitting on a shelf in a room temperature store for three years probably isn’t going to do much for the wine.

When shopping for more expensive or collectable wines, vintages become a little more complex. For high-end wines, a lot of stock is put into the year; the best can cost several times as much as an ordinary vintage, even from the same producer. But the qualities that define a great vintage for one person may not always be the same for another. Take the 2005 vintage in Burgundy, for example.

That year was near perfect with warm weather, just enough rain and great conditions for harvest. The grapes were healthy, ripe and had a perfect balance of acids and tannins. The result was wines of tremendous structure, purity and depth, the best of which could age 50 or more years. The press went crazy and many producers proclaimed they had made the best wines of their careers. Not surprisingly, the public followed suit and bought up the wines in a frenzy — but was this really the best idea for all consumers? I heard back from many people that when they tried the wine they found it hard, exceedingly tannic and not yielding much pleasure. While 2005 may have been one of the most important vintages in several decades, it was certainly not the best choice for thirsty consumers looking to pop the corks in the next couple of years.

What winemakers or critics value as a great vintage may not necessarily be what all consumers value. After the successful 2005 campaign, one winemaker in Burgundy pointed out that he didn’t know who should buy these wines — the only people who could afford them will be dead by the time the wines are ready to drink.

The best vintage on paper may not always be the one you should buy and the same is true when choosing a wine in a restaurant. Armed with the information that 2000 was a great year in Bordeaux will only hurt you if you choose a wine from this highly regarded but searingly tannic young vintage to accompany your meal. You’re better off when selecting wines at a restaurant to go with a slightly off vintage from a producer with a good reputation.

While chasing the great vintages from the most famous regions of the world may seem like a good idea, it isn’t necessarily going to lead to drinking better wines, at least not in the short term. If you want to put a collection of great wines together or simply taste some of the world’s best, you’re better off looking to quality producers and forgetting about vintages. After all, when you hear that a vintage is great, this is always a sweeping generalization made about a large area; it doesn’t mean that all the wine is great. The same is true in so-called “off vintages,” where talented winemakers often craft their most interesting wines.

So remember: Just because someone else thinks that one year is better than another doesn’t mean it will be the same to you. The only way to know is to pull the cork and decide for yourself.