Alcoholic Beverages

Are treated on a different page: “How long to keep a bottle?” And “Choose a wine to keep very long.”

The concept of vintage covers the year of harvest and weather production. The concept of vintage is a guide for the purchase, custody and tasting.

Deduct the quality of a wine of the vintage’s reputation is partial (or dishonest). Hope to understand a wine from a vague notion as unnecessary. You should use criteria stronger, and especially taste.

Tables vintages

A document can summarize the quality of a wine region? An array of vintage wines is almost as rough indicator of price and the reputation of the most famous wines that year and the potential for custody of these wines.

Note that professionals (producers, distributors and many critics) tend to minimize the difficulties of recent vintages for sale. You must not believe the first account reports that if you trust the author.

Here are a few tables (all English):

• Mr. Parker and his magazine do nothing to the specificity of the Loire, Pinot Noir, Spain. Use the table of the Wine Advocate for Rhônes, Bordeaux, Cabernet U.S. union.
• Look at the map of the Wine Spectator vintages for wines large caliber (with lots of oak nine great maturity of the grapes, low acidity) – to drink quickly.
• Compilations of Berry Bros & Rudd have a reference for Burgundy and Bordeaux custody of more than 20 euros. You’ll find: Ratings (even for older vintages), maturity indices and descriptions of vintages.

Reliable products

What is the quality of a vintage? It is a little useful in some countries with favorable climates (Languedoc, California, Australia). The regularity of climate results in wines of similar quality when the preparation is the same.

In addition, industrial production methods can be applied to produce the same wine year after year …. resulting in a reliable and standardized. This applies to champagnes and wine merchant of “international taste”.

Handicrafts

In temperate zones (Europe, New York, Washington, New Zealand), the cooler climate allows for the development of wines to taste more precise. Whatever the year, modern wine making techniques now allow you to save production (wine thank you!). We will have a good wine if the vine has been cultivated.

Thus, a wine from a winemaker demanding in a difficult vintage is often more interesting that a wine grower and a lax years town. Neighboring plots will express different qualities, if only because of rains in September. Only the good producers can save a crop mutilated by bad weather.

Concept of vintage is practical

The great vintages that exist in the heads of fans. Some generalizations are just useful for apprehension: there are traits common to wines that year. Here I think of the temperate regions (France, Germany, Oregon).

The similarities can be explained by:

• Climatic conditions suffered by neighboring vines (mild winter, frost, hail, sunshine, rain in September). For 2003, it was likely that the deficit of spring rain and summer heat wave induce a lack of freshness in France and the Italian Piedmont, this has often proved.
• The mode of the time over the methods of wine making in the region. A dramatic example: the changeover from Rioja (Spain) in the international standard in 1994.

In practice, the wines of the same common bottled one or two months, often share some adjectives:

• They are difficult to sample during the same period (a few weeks for 1997 of Burgundy and the Loire Valley, a few years for 1998).
• They are generally costs (1996 and 2001 in France) or soft (2003 in Europe).
• They are bitter (1998 in France) or smooth (2002 Burgundy).
• Another example: almost all Bordeaux wines of 1975 have for two decades attacked the front teeth (traces of oxalic acid).
• A fine wine in the “exceptional” (1989, 1990, 2000, 2005 in France) should wait longer than in the “difficult” (2003, 2004 in France). Say that the speed of evolution change with the year … and there are many exceptions.