While the word “vintage” can often be associated with and used in reference to things that are old, it more accurately denotes a particular age, rather than suggesting it is something significantly old. In the case of wine, any product that is of a particular vintage refers to a particular year and ensures that the wine has been made entirely from grapes of that year.
While you might believe that this would be rather straight forward – either the product was made entirely from grapes of that year, or not, there are guidelines by country for such things. Most countries do not require that a bottle labeled to be a particular vintage, contain wine made from 100% of grapes of the same year. Most will allow a small percentage of grapes to be added from outside of the year and those numbers are country specific. In the United States, the American Viticulture Area sets the standard for labeling, and bottles labeled AVA vintage contain at least 95% of wine made from single year grapes. Without the AVA designation on the label, wines which claim the contents are of a particular vintage must contain 85% of grapes from that year.
The benefit of bottling from grapes of a single year comes in the form of taste consistency throughout the bottling of a particular year. This eliminates the host of shifting influences on any end results by averting differences that environmental influences will have on the grapes.
Vintage wines are reserved for those years when the crop is of exceptionally high quality and the results are highlighted and heralded by creating a focused product. These are then the most desirable products and highly coveted due to a smaller supply. So not every year that you’re on wine country tours will you see vintages bottled at the wineries you’ll visit. Good results tend to come to the entire appellation and bad results come the same way, so a particular year will be known as a good vintage for a particular appellation, regardless of the specific winery.
