There is nothing that says a wine must be a vintage wine. “Vintage wine” isn’t necessarily a quality label. But we have gotten used to it and might feel a little lost if we suddenly don’t find a year stated on the label of our Bordeaux for the evening. Apart from champagne, fortified wines, and some cheap wines, it is customary to put the year on the label.
However, there can be advantages to blending several vintages. And there is more and more talk about this, not least in California. A grower in the Santa Cruz Mountains, for example, has a solera with ten vintages. With this, he says, he can offer a wine with a specific mature character. Difficult weather conditions – frost, fires, droughts, floods – can lead to smaller volumes better saved for the following year and blended into a larger volume.
A cold year can be too acidic but suitable to blend with the following year’s ripe harvest. The wine will have better balance, and you can more easily blend it with the taste and character you want. By and large, that is precisely what they do in Champagne.
We know some French producers who have long been making excellent red and white wines without a specific year, such as Domaine Le Soula in Roussillon, created by the star winemaker Gérard Gauby. Trigone Blanc is made from five different vintages; the older vintages are kept in tank and in new and old oak. They want a little oxidation in this superb wine.
Another example is the Plenér winery in the Czech Republik (Vinařství Plenér), pronounced like the French expression plein air, essentially meaning outside. It is run by Dominika Černohorská. She makes a wine called Cuvée Leonard that is a blend of 2021 and 2022, with one vintage giving body and another freshness. It is an unusual blend of three grape varieties: müller thurgau, veritas and pálava, and an excellent example of that even grapes with the most humble reputation, like muller thurgau, can make excellent wine in the right hands.
In fact, there are plenty of examples, if you think about it, champagne and other sparkling wines, as mentioned, but also many of the other brand name focussed wines sold by négociants, houses and cooperatives. Often volume wines, but sometimes very ambitious, as you can see.
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