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4 Comments so far ↓

• nathanyarnold // May 28, 2011 at 7:48 am

  Vintage refers to the year it was made.

  A non-vintage wine means the year isn’t listed on the label and *may* contain wine from different years.

  Champagne is often released non-vintage (ie. without a date) because the region doesn’t get consistently ripe grapes every year. They have to blend wines from both good and bad years so that the product is consistently pretty good every year.

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• sinned // May 28, 2011 at 7:48 am

  It’s less than 25 years old, so my alcoholic friend says.

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• deliciasyvariedades // May 28, 2011 at 7:48 am

  Vintage, in wine-making, is the process of picking grapes and creating the finished product.

  A vintage wine is one made from grapes that were all, or primarily, grown in a single specified year. In certain wines it can denote quality, as in Port, where Port houses make and declare "vintage" Port in their best years. From this tradition, a common, though incorrect, usage applies the term to any wine that is perceived to be particularly old or of a particularly high quality.

  Most countries allow a vintage wine to include a portion of wine that is not from the year denoted on the label. Australia, New Zealand and the member states of the European Union require 85% same-year content for vintage-dated wine. In Chile and South Africa, the requirement is only 75%. In the United States, the requirement is 85%, unless the wine is designated with an AVA, (e.g., Russian River Valley), in which case it is 95%. Technically, the 85% rule in the United States applies equally to foreign imports, but there are obvious challenges in enforcing the regulation.

  The opposite of a vintage wine is a nonvintage wine, which is usually a blend from the produce of two or more years. This is a common practice for winemakers seeking a consistent style of wine, year on year.

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• Pontac // May 28, 2011 at 7:48 am

  Vintage means the year the grapes were picked. If a wine has a vintage year on it, then it means that the grapes were picked in that year (or at least 75% in the USA, more elsewhere)

  So a non-vintage wine is one that doesn’t show a year on its label. Most wines are vintage wines (just look around your supermarket wine shelves), but some are non-vintage — which means they contain a blend of various years.

  Vintage does not mean a wine less than 25 years old (the lesson is not to believe don’t believe alcoholic friends) and ‘deliciasy…’ — if you are going to copy chunks out of Wikipedia then you should acknowledge that you have done so.

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