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Vintage Wine

A vintage wine can have many different types of grapes, but they all have to be grown during the same growing season. Most vineyards use grapes from multiple years to give their wines a consistent taste from year to year, but many also produce some true vintage wines. Grapes vary from year to year, some years they have long seasons and grow especially fruity grapes that make great wine.

Vintage wines are often thought to refer to any old bottle of wine, even if the grapes were harvested during different years. This is incorrect, an old bottle is not necessarily vintage even when it has a single year printed on it. Many bottles are only labeled vintage if it was an especially good year, a bad vintage wine may go unnoticed as a vintage at all. This is to protect the reputation of the vineyard.

Vintage wines can command very high prices, especially aged bottles from good grape producing years. Whether or not they are actually better than wines with mixed years is up for debate, many blind taste tests have shown no preference for vintage and some have shown the exact opposite. Various years of grape harvests can produce interesting and desirable tastes that wouldn’t happen with a vintage. 

 

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