| Late last fall the Wine Spectator, more or less the bible
of the North American wine industry, ran a cover story proclaiming the 2004 vintage
in Napa a blockbuster, bestowing one obscure wine superlative after another in
singing the year’s praises—especially in comparison to its inferior
brethren, the mediocre 2003 vintage. The problem arose when, in a blind tasting
of the wines, a 2003 by Alberta transplant Cliff Lede bested all others in its
category. I began to muse on this somewhat humourous conundrum for the Wine Spectator
and thought about how it played into an idea that would have been heretical to
utter two decades ago: Do vintages really matter anymore in the world of wine?
To grasp the importance of such a contention, consider the fact that after
varietals and terroir (or location) the concept of vintage for fine wines has
been paramount in determining a wine’s “value” for over 100
years. Oenophiles will debate passionately the relative merits of 1947 vs. 1961
Bordeaux. But what to make of the fact that legendary wine writer and critic (and,
full disclosure, my good friend) Hugh Johnson recently declared himself on the
side of vintages going the way of the dodo?
If so, someone should quickly inform the consumer, because for you, especially
at the high end, vintages still reign supreme in determining a wine’s worth.
At the same time the Wine Spectator came out, a high-end wine auction took place
in New York selling the prized cellar of a collector, which featured many verticals
(the same wine from different vintages) up for bid. Six-bottle lots of Penfold’s
Grange, Australia’s greatest wine, sold for $3,500, $2,200, $7,000 and $6,000
for the vintages 1986, 1982, 1976 and 1971 respectively. Clearly, in the minds
of these deep-pocketed consumers, vintage still matters quite a lot.
The key issue may be that all wines from vintage to vintage are drinkable
earlier on and are much more dependable due to overall modern wine science, training
and experience, technology, weather forecasting and selection—both in the
vineyard and the winery. This change helps the consumer find well-made table wines
for value everywhere in the world, ranging from a dry sangiovese by Farnese with
a chianti-like cherry fruit to sweeter Yellow Tail Australian varietals. These
wines are popular but without recognizable terroir or great individuality and
don’t vary much from year to year.
However, in my experience more expensive top-quality wines will always be
more variable. In fact, as technology has a tendency to make all wines taste more
similar and as larger companies continue to blend grapes from many regions to
one homogeneous whole, terroir becomes more difficult to discern and therefore
inherent vintage differences are perhaps the saving grace.
 We
need to look no further than our own backyard to see this dichotomy in play. On
the one hand we have the wonderful wines of the Okanagan’s Blasted Church,
whose playful labels and consistent product have developed brand loyalty in a
remarkably short period of time. The winery eschews the overemphasis on vintage
in favour of an approach that uses technology to create a reliable product, year
in year out.
On the other hand we have Osoyoos Larose, a winery with deep French roots,
whose stated purpose is to make a Bordeaux-style blend that will age and impress
for years to come, but
who is willing to sacrifice uniform consistency for the purpose of crafting exceptional
wine. For them reliability is not a prime focus—character is.
In the end, I will cede that for everyday wines, even for those such as Caymus’
Conundrum that carry above-average price tags, vintage has become less and less
important as technology has improved. And even at the high end, all wines are
better, vintage in and vintage out, than they used to be.
But I carry the baggage of being a lawyer, a busy wine judge and an information
junkie. I like to focus on the minutia of vintages and remember fondly enjoying
the many treasures of specific vintages as the ’45 Mouton, ’53 Margaux,
’59 Lafite, ’61 Latour, ’62 La Tache DRC, ’67 d’Yquem,
’78 Hermitage La Chapelle or ’89 Haut-Brion, among others. A part
of the overall enjoyment of this mystery game can be the challenge of assessing
the quality of the wine in your glass and trying to solve it by identifying the
vintage. Please don’t take that away by telling me this is no longer possible
with the new vintages.
If you truly don’t believe in vintage, then I have a case of ’99 Chateau
Margaux that I’ll gladly swap for your case of 2000 Margaux. Come to think
of it, I think I’ll call up Hugh Johnson and see if he’ll make that
trade. |
1998 Pomerol
