Wine’s Most Fascinating Quality
Every sip you take has been influenced by the one before it and influences the next one made.

The vintage date on a wine label refers to the year the grapes were harvested, but does that tell you about the character of the wine in the bottle — and, does it matter?
The answer is no … and yes; well, really, it depends.
For the vast majority of wine drinkers, drinking the vast majority of wines made, the vintage does not matter. This is based on three generalizations:
One, most wines don’t have a lot of vintage variation. Many of those made in the New World (i.e., not Europe) and from mediterranean climates (warm, sunny, coastal regions like the south of France and the Greek Islands) benefit from relatively steady weather patterns year to year and have little difficulty ripening fruit consistently.
Two, most people are not very discerning tasters or don’t mind the differences. We like wine for wine’s sake; a little variation from year to year is either unnoticed or not fussed over. As a very experienced taster who can taste, and often remember, the differences year to year, I appreciate whatever the vintage brings with it in most circumstances.
Three, major wine brands, which are those that produce the highest quantity of wines, use a myriad of techniques in the cellar, including 62 different legal additives, to buffer out those differences for a consistent product, no matter what the vintage throws at them: hot or cold, wet or dry, disease pressure or none, high yields or low yields.
So what is all the fuss about? Why declare a vintage if it doesn’t matter? Because for those who see wine as more than a drink, a vintage is like the key to a story.
The most fascinating thing about wine, compared to any other consumable good, is its impact and evolution along all axes: geological, historical, regional, climatological, political, traditional, technological, familial, marketable, personal, and ageable. Every sip you take has been influenced by the one before it and influences the next one made.
The weather from year to year (“the climate”), region to region (“the macro climate”), and site to site (“the micro climate”) changes constantly. They influence not only the character of grapes and subsequent wine, but the behavior of the wine grower and everyone associated with them. Eventually that person is the one with the wine in their glass.
A notable example were the fires in California, Oregon, and Australia in 2020. Besides the heartbreaking loss of some vineyards, grapes that hadn’t been harvested — most of the red ones — were in contact with smoke. Exposure can lead to smoke taint in wine, a flaw causing wine to taste like an acrid ashtray.
Interventions to correct the problem in the winery are limited and they affect more than just the smoke taint, changing other flavors and the structure of the wine in the process. Not to mention they are costly and labor intensive. Even with these hurdles, some producers — like Arnot Roberts in California and Cameron in Oregon — used a combination of methods that worked some magic and managed to make some delicious wine. Many more, like Lingua Franca in Willamette Valley, made nothing, a financial burden with lasting ripple effects on the industry.
Catastrophe isn’t the only force to reckon with. A boon, like the exceptional yet cool German 2021 vintage, can turn an entire quality tier on its head. Since 1971, when Germany codified into law its quality scale, or prädikat system, wines were priced accordingly.
Kabinett has been considered the “lowest quality” (entirely subjective, of course) and price tier, with grapes picked with the least amount of sugar at harvest. Top examples are usually under $30. Up the scale of “quality,” price, and sugar levels are Spätlese and then Auslese, which usually start around $50 and go up from there.
Then 2021 happened: The Kabinett were lights out, bonkers delicious with a high quality that was suddenly more desirable than anything else. The cognoscenti have lost their minds for them, turning the pricing scheme on its head. The annual Verband Deutscher Pradikatsweinguter auction in Germany saw records smashed, with Kabinett all more expensive than Spatlese or Auslese.
It would be remiss of me to not mention the role of the press in the discussion of vintages as well. Critics trade in the sensational. Declaring vintages “good” or “bad” doesn’t leave room for a lot of nuance. They also have their own particular tastes and preferences that could not possibly align with everyone else all at the same time.
While I agree that some difficult vintages in some regions produce a vast number of difficult wines, there are no absolutes. And when huge portions of the population are told X is bad by those with influence, it can have a negative effect on those regions and its winemakers. They can also be downright wrong.
The best and most recent example of this is 2011. Most critics panned the vintage across much of Europe. In Champagne and Burgundy, there were a lot of wines I did not enjoy, but great winemakers made great Champagne and in Burgundy the whites were generally fabulous with the reds often showing with a green bitter note.
In Bordeaux and Piedmont, many wines require five, 10, even 20 years in the cellar before they start to hit their stride. The 2011s, on the other hand, are some of my absolute favorite vintages to drink in the near term. They are lighter bodied, lower alcohol, higher acid, and are developing quicker than “good” years. Thanks to bad reviews upon release, the prices are also reasonable.
So I guess what I’m saying is: Please call the vintages I love bad, so I and others can keep affording to drink them.
The bottom line is vintages do change every year. By all means, if you find a wine you are particularly attracted to in a certain vintage, buy a lot of it. This way you can keep drinking it until you find another one you like as much. But for the rest of us, whether the good, the bad, or the ugly, every year is different, and wine, like people, should be celebrated for those differences.