Journal

Vintage is the year in which the grapes inside your bottle of wine was picked and
processed. That is the year that’s visible on the label of your bottle. In the case of un-wooded white wines, the year is a reflection of when it was produced and bottled and      probably sold. Some of you might say, “but Howard, there are no vintage visible on my bottle” and I would answer, “well, then it’s a non-vintage bottle of wine.” This means that the producer mixed two or more vintages making it a non-vintage.

To avoid confusion, the growing season starts in September the previous year in the southern hemisphere. The vines start budding, and the fruit starts exponentially increasing in size in November/December. Thereafter the process of veraison starts, which is where berries of the red cultivars start colouring. Weeks later the harvest process starts. As I’ve mentioned before, some cultivars bud early, mid, and late season.

Most winemakers, especially veterans, and even wine lovers follow every vintage’s growing season and weather pattern in order to determine whether it was a spectacular or problematic season. Also, when it comes to cellaring wines, it could give you a good indication whether you can lie it down for extended periods of times. The longer the ripening season, the higher the chances are that you’ll achieve better phenolic ripeness, meaning the sugar content of the grapes did not reach too high levels before the grapes were fully ripe. Hotter vintages tend to deliver wines with high alcohols, because the winemaker had to wait until the grapes reached maturity, which could lead to problems such as stuck ferments (the yeast dies because the alcohol is too high, leaving residual sugar in the wine).

For the same reason it is not ideal to plant grapes in areas with an average temperature that is too high. The adverse effect applies when you plant vines in an area that is too cold, then the grapes are mature, but never reaches high enough sugar levels. Leading to low-alcohol, weak wine with high acidities and green characters.

We tend to call years that deliver the perfect conditions in the growing and harvest season a ‘vintage year.’ These years produce the perfect sugar-acid balance, ripe tannins and cellaring potential that could outlive the winemaker. The oldest wine I’ve tasted was a Madeira wine in a sweet style, vintage 1860. It was amazing! Even a South African version made by KWV (vintage 1937) was still alive and stunning.

2010 as a vintage was quite difficult for the producers and the winemakers. My experience was that there was a great deal of unevenness at the beginning of the season, and initially looked like it would start early. The average temperature stayed constant and low, which extended the ripening season, which made it later than expected in the end. Good rainfall the previous season, but high wind-speeds lead to damage at flowering. This led to very low crop this season, which created a certain extent of panic. Very good concentration of fruit flavours is seen across the board. The quality vs. quantity scenario seemed to prevail this year. A challenging year for myself as a first vintage, and exceptional potential for ageing and colour because the vines had little fruit to ripen.

Till next time!

Cheers!

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