Vintage Charts, for What?

About 15 years ago, Bruno Prats, then the owner of Chateau Cos d’Estournel, in St. Estéphe, Bordeaux, declared that there would be no more bad vintages of wine. At the time I considered his remarks the height of arrogance, a characteristic not unknown among the Bordelais.

I was wrong. His was a bit of an overstatement, perhaps, but essentially, Mr. Prats was right on the mark. Great wine may still be elusive, but rarely now does a year go by that doesn’t produce good wine, even in marginal regions like Bordeaux, where the weather is as risky as a dot-com stock.

The fact of the matter is that in the cellar and the vineyard, the winemakers of the world have rendered the vintage chart obsolete. For the uninitiated, a vintage chart tracks various categories of wine over a period of years. Most vintage charts use numerical ratings; some add a code indicating whether the wines are too young to drink, ready to drink or seriously past their prime.

Each year, Robert M. Parker Jr. publishes a vintage chart of daunting thoroughness. This year’s has 32 separate wine categories. Even so, he warns: “This vintage chart should be regarded as a very general overall rating slanted in favor of what the finest producers were capable of producing in a particular wine region. Such charts are filled with exceptions to the rule. Astonishingly good wines from skillful or lucky vintners in years rated mediocre, and thin, diluted, characterless wines from incompetent or greedy producers in great years”.

Vintage charts came from France and were compact cards with listings for Bordeaux, Burgundy, Beaujolais, the Rhone, Alsace, Champagne and the Loire. Today, excellent wines are made in the Languedoc, in Roussillon and the Southwest, often when wines from more traditional regions are less than exciting.

So can any single vintage chart do justice to Italy, where there are a hundred different wine regions, where stunning wines might be made in the foothills of the Alps and in Sicily in the same year that mediocre or poor wines are coming from Tuscany and Umbria? A chart might report conscientiously that, say, 1997 was a good year in Spain. Where in Spain: Penedes? Rioja? Priorat? Rueda?

What of the newest wine sources: Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa? Don’t they deserve space on the charts? And even if they got it, what chart could show their growing diversity. Both Chile and Argentina are developing new wine regions far to the south of their traditional vineyards; Australia’s Margaret River region is 2,000 miles from its Hunter Valley; South Africa makes different wines in Hermanus from what it does in Stellenbosch.

A vintage chart will advise, for example, that the 2005 Bordeaux will need several years, if not decades of bottle aging, after it arrives here sometime late this year. But a consumer finds the shop already filled with 2005 wines that are, he is told, ready now. Of course, the chart concerns itself with the classified growths, the finest of the Bordeaux wines, and ignores the hundreds of lesser wines, many of which, these days, are startlingly close to their better-known siblings in quality.

The vintage chart speaks to wine regions at a time when winemakers, and consumers,  are increasingly concerned with terroir, the uniqueness of small plots of land. Some vintners now produce five or six separate wines from half a dozen small contiguous vineyards, while others make two or three different wines from the same vineyard. There are heights, like 1945, 1961, 1982 and 2000 in Bordeaux and 1994 in the Napa Valley, and lows, like 1991, 1992, 2004 in Bordeaux and Tuscany, but not one year when some decent Bordeaux wine was not produced.

But it’s unlikely that we will ever see vintages like 1963 and 1965, dreadful years in Bordeaux that resulted in dreadful wine. There will always be years when nature does not cooperate, like 1991,1992 and 2004 in Bordeaux, but even in those years, pleasant, drinkable if not age-worthy wines were made. Everywhere, hardier rootstocks, better grapes, limited yields and severe grape selection at harvest time have increased quality. So, too, have new organic methods of pest and disease control and new planting techniques. In the 1960’s, wine was made much as it had been made in the 1860s. Now, NASA satellites tell growers where to plant and which efforts have been the most successful.

This is not quite a golden age for wine; in spite of everything, there will always be dull or poorly made wines around. But those are not the problem of the vintage. And competition, which is keener than ever, makes it difficult for incompetent or unscrupulous vintners to survive in the market.

Vintage charts are not entirely passé. Wine can be confusing, and the chart does offer some general information, as Mr. Parker, the critic, suggests. Of course, in the auction rooms, where collectors haggle over 1982 Pétrus and 1996 Romanée Conti, vintage charts can serve as a handy reference tool. Elsewhere though, vintages are increasingly irrelevant. And I don’t think I’m alone in that point of view.

In the final scene of Little Caesar, Edward G. Robinson grumbles, “Is this the end of Rico?” To my way of thinking, that sacred talisman of the wine buff, the vintage chart, is just as dead as Rico was when the screen went black.

Christian Vanneque was head sommelier of La Tour d’Argent in Paris and
professor at L’Academie du Vin in Paris. He served as a judge at the
legendary 1976 Paris Wine Tasting. He has been the publisher of
Bali’s Best Bets Guide since 2002 and is the owner of SIP wine bar in Bali. 
Contact: Christian@TheWineCircus.com 

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