What is the best qualification to have when drinking wine? Well, curiosity.
Not a good nose or amazing taste buds. It is worth much more to be curious at what other producers are doing, in other regions and in other countries. Wine can taste so incredibly different and it is a shame to always drink the same wine, no matter how much you like it.
Well, actually it is difficult to drink the same wine for too long. A vintage runs out and you start with the next one. Most wines are vintage wines, even though that word, at least some years ago, had an exclusive air to it. Vintage wines were noble. I guess people at the time meant Bordeaux wines in particular. But actually most wines are vintage wines. At least today. Maybe not 30 years ago when half of France’s production was simple table wines without either origin or vintage.
Today, these table wines are called “Vin de France” and can put both origin, grape and vintage on the label. Most of them come from Languedoc, where normally the weather is quite warm. Vintage variations are not huge. But it does not matter. Vintage is prestige.
Some big brands do their best to smooth out the vintage differences. Customers should not notice any difference in the wine even though the year has changed, is their idea. No surprises even though it happened to rain a bit too much one summer or shine too much hot sun another. It sounds terribly boring. These wines are not bad. Only impersonal. And boring.
A vintage wine, however, sounds refined. Like something from the old world. A wine carefully decanted over a candle and leaving a brownish deposit along the sides. Because a vintage wine is always old, isn’t it?
In this month’s Brief you can read about our new wine tours. About Piedmont wine. About hens in Bourgueil, an organic wine tasting, reds in China and much more.
Britt & Per
PS: Recommend to your friends to read the Brief!
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