page_title: Vintage
section_title: Importance of vintage
hierarchical_section_title: Vintage / Importance of vintage
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Champagne millésimé 1995 à l'Alliance française de Wuhan (http://www.wuhan.afchine.org/)
context_page_description: Vintage, in winemaking, is the process of picking grapes and creating the finished product—wine. A vintage wine is one made from grapes that were all, or primarily, grown and harvested in a single specified year. In certain wines, it can denote quality, as in Port wine, where Port houses make and declare vintage Port in their best years. From this tradition, a common, though not strictly correct, 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. In Chile and South Africa, the requirement is 75% same-year content for vintage-dated wine. In Australia, New Zealand, and the member states of the European Union, the requirement is 85%. In the United States, the requirement is 85%, unless the wine is designated with an AVA, in which case it is 95%. Technically, the 85% rule in the United States applies equally to imports, but there are difficulties 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.
context_section_description: The importance assigned to vintage is both varied and disputed.
  For wine produced in regions at the colder climatic limits of wine production, vintage can be very important, because some seasons will be much warmer and produce riper grapes and better wine. On the other hand, a poor growing season can lead to grapes failing to reach optimal ripeness, resulting in grape juice that is higher in acid and lower in sugar, which affects the quality of the resulting wine.
  In many wine regions, especially in the New World, growing seasons are much more uniform. In dry regions, the systematic and controlled use of irrigation also contributes to uniform vintages. However, such wines are regularly labeled by vintage because of consumer demand.
  Wines of superior vintages from prestigious producers and regions will often command much higher prices than those from average vintages. This is especially the case if wines are likely to improve further with some age in the bottle. Some wines are only labeled with a vintage in better-than-average years, to maintain their quality and reputation, while the vast majority of wines are produced to be drunk young and fresh. In such cases, a vintage is usually considered less important. However, it can serve to protect consumers against buying a wine that would not be expected to improve with age and could be past its best, such as with Beaujolais nouveau, a wine style made to be consumed within months of its bottling.
  The importance of vintage may sometimes be exaggerated. For example, New York Times wine columnist Frank J. Prial declared the vintage chart to be dead, writing that "winemakers of the world have rendered the vintage chart obsolete" (Prial), and Bill Marsano wrote that "winemakers now have the technology and skills to make good and even very good wines in undistinguished years" (Marsano). James Laube of  Wine Spectator has asserted that "even an average vintage can yield some grand wines" (Laube).
caption: Vintage Champagne
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