In the first draft of this piece I began with a 1,000 word treatise on the history, sociology, and science behind why people care about a wine’s vintage. It was really great and all but A). You probably don’t care and B). I’d rather tell you about this vertical tasting I did the other day instead of trying to convince you that I know a lot about trivial matters. But if you want to drink wine and talk about it sometime, let me know.
Here’s the abbreviated version. You’re welcome.
Let’s face it, worrying about the vintage (The year the grapes are grown and harvested) of a wine is, to the average consumer, so 2009. It’s passé. It’s behind the times. It’s outmoded, outdated, obsolete. It’s antiquated. It’s…vintage? There are some really good reasons as to why the year the grapes are grown matters to how the wine will taste:
- Acid, tannins, sugars, and phenolics levels (all the things that affect the flavor of the wine) are in flux until the grapes are picked. Weather, the microbiome, and the grape overlords (humans), which are commonly known as Terroir, can all affect these levels.
- The resulting wine from these ever-changing grapes will therefore be different assuming winemaking practices are the same.
The fact that there are differences has led small groups of humans to declare that some vintages are better than others based primarily on subjective reasoning. However, there are reasons why this is somewhat nonsense:
- Winemakers have always tried to produce consistent wines from year to year. It’s only been in the past 50 years or so that they are actually getting good at it. Wineries are a business. They want to have consistent product and generally try to avoid a “New Coke” situation.
- Wine is constantly changing. Therefore, when someone declares that one vintage is superior to another, they may think differently if they tried the two next year. Therefore it’s impossible to constantly compare the latest vintage with all of the vintages that have ever been. Additionally, you’re comparing vintages against how they are now, not how they have been or will be.
- People have different preferences (As will be shown below).
I offer this background purely to color my hesitation in putting on what is known as a vertical tasting where you taste and compare the same wine from the same producer made in different years. With this particular vertical tasting I wanted to bring up all of the topics that come up in the snobby versions: weather, geography, bullshit, stories about the winery, but give them appropriate context as to why certain things matter and others don’t.
Through a serious act of self-restraint I had 6 years of Yoakim Bridge’s Zinfandel sitting in my cellar. Yoakim Bridge is a Sonoma, CA winery located on Dry Creek Valley road between Lake Sonoma and Healdsburg. Because I was only able to find 3 other people to partake in this venture I only brought out 4 years: 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 for the tasting. All the bottles were opened about an hour ahead of time as an attempt at providing some sort of even playing ground. Since we were having Zinfandel, I made some Strawberry/blackberry/ginger barbecue sauce and slow cooked some beef in it, served along side cornbread and collard greens because sometimes I like to remind people that I was born in the south.
Everyone had 2 glasses (same size and shape) so I poured the 2008 and 2009 first before we moved on to the 2010 and 2011 all the while discussing the historical weather patterns and the growth cycle of a grape. Correction: I lectured on those topics and they politely asked some questions and then we discussed a variety of non-wine related subjects while we ate and drank. I even had a map and a couple of graphs comparing the weather year to year…I thought that was kind of cool.
Yoakim Bridge produces what I would call a typical Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel. If you were able to taste all of the Zinfandels that were grown and produced in Dry Creek Valley you would find that they all have relatively similar characteristics which is now starting to be defined as Typicity in the wine world. When doing a vertical tasting, you’re really learning about the Typicity of that particular winery. But of course, as with statistics, you’re really only discovering what is typical about your particular sample (In our case the 2008-2011 Zinfandels as they tasted on that day).
Dry Creek Zinfandel will have a number of common Zinfandel flavor characteristics if you were selecting them from a flavor wheel: a mix of red and dark berries followed by a collection of baking spices for those that have spent some time in oak. It differs slightly from the typical Zin in that the big, bold jammy and stewed fruit flavors don’t usually appear. The Yoakim Bridge 2008 and 2009 were fairly similar in flavor profile; more prominence of the darker berries than red, a dash of baking spices, prime for drinking…which, by the way, what does that mean?
When you make a red wine and especially if you throw it in some oak afterwords, it’s going to have some very noticeable tannins (the cotton-mouth feeling you get in your mouth after consuming red wines, coffee, teas, etc.) and hopefully a sufficient amount of acid (Saliva rushing into your mouth after you swallow). Over time, both the harshness of acid and tannin will degrade. When tannins degrade of “soften”, your saliva still binds to them causing that rough feeling, but it’s like someone changed the sandpaper grit from 40 to 180 (That’s moving from a coarser grain to a finer grain for non-sandpapering people). Concurrently, while the Total Acidity (TA) doesn’t lessen significantly, the composition of acids in the wine does change. The harsher acids transform through processes like esterification and the overall perception of acid is that it’s softer. The resulting effect is that a wine that starts off being bright and exuberant will mellow over time.
So could the tannins of the 2008 have been a little softer than the 2009? Sure. Could the acid have felt a little tamer in the 2008 than the 2009? Sure. But the differences were fairly negligible and what what most wine connoisseurs are looking for really is balance anyway. Have the tannins softened an appropriate amount that matches how the acid has softened or is one of those items still sticking out? Both of these wines were well-balanced and well into their mellow period, which I assume is like an artist’s blue period, in this respect and that’s why I would call them prime for drinking. How long a wine will age depends on how much and how well balanced the levels of tannin, acid, alcohol, and sugar are when the wine is made. It should also be noted that while numbers about how long a wine can age are thrown about with alarming degrees of authority and confidence, I would estimate that the margin of error to these guesses is probably somewhere between (+/-) 5-10 years. Fact is, the science of aging wine just isn’t at the point where anyone can state emphatically what is going on and what the exact timeline will be for the aging process.
The atypical wine of the bunch was the 2010. It was brighter (think acid) and the fruit flavors were slightly more skewed to the red berry spectrum. While the typical flavor profile returned in the 2011, it was noticeably younger than the 2008 and 2009 in that it also carried stronger acid and tannins. Why the difference between the 2010 though? The official conclusion is: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Looking at the weather charts I put together, you can see a slight dip in average temperatures in 2010 along with less temperature fluctuation during the growing period which could theoretically mean a higher level of acid, but the winemaker could very well have done an acid treatment slightly differently that year, or perhaps a wine used for topping off was slightly different, fertilizer regiments could have been different, or…well there are a myriad of variables that could have changed. I did send a last minute message to the winery to see if I could get the pH and brix (sugar levels) from each of the harvest years, but they hadn’t responded yet at the time of the tasting.
In terms of preferences, there were 4 of us tasting and 3 different answers to that. Two people thought it was a toss up between the 2009 and 2011, one person preferred the atypical 2010 probably because they’re a bit contrarian, and I preferred the 2008 most likely because I subconsciously have been programmed to think that the older a wine is the better it will be even though I consciously know that’s not necessarily true. By volume, in a bottle line up after the initial tasting had been completed, the 2008 had the least, the 2009 was the second most drained, followed by the 2011, and the 2010 still retained the most. So I win.
What does one really learn when they do a vertical tasting? You learn that wine changes over time and that those changes will either be negligible or stark depending on where that chemical cocktail is in its journey. It moves in terms of spectrums, not definite steps. In this vertical tasting it was fortunate that none of these wines had passed their “Point of Diminishing Maturity” as I call it where all the components go from being balanced to falling apart. I’ve been in tastings with wines that have been 30-40 years old and while most were certainly interesting, I wouldn’t want to drink more than a glass. I’m sure there’s a 50 year old wine out there somewhere that tastes divine, but honestly I doubt I’ll ever get to experience it due to access issues.
Yes, wine gets better with age, but at some point they just get senile and crotchety. Depending on the wine, that point can be 1 year all the way up to who knows. Yet, that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a point at which the wine is “perfect”. Some people prefer the young and bright wines, while others prefer the more mellow experience. Also like people, a balanced wine will generally stay balanced throughout its lifespan until it turns into a balanced vinegar…except that people don’t turn into vinegar. Oh dear, my metaphors have reached their Point of Diminishing Maturity.
Weather data attained from the National Centers for Environmental Information
Aaron Berdofe's Wine and Food Experience 