Berger: Reassessing the worth of vintage dates

One of the wine sayings I dislike most is “like a vintage wine,” as if any wine with a vintage date is worthy of praise.

It once may have had a grain of truth. Many decades ago it was difficult to attain quality regularly. So wineries would use vintage dates only to indicate a wine of better quality than ordinary stuff.

Any wine without a vintage date was considered poor by comparison. Such wines should be drunk soon.

It has been so long since this was true that the phrase today has no meaning. Vintage dates now widely appear on every kind of wine, from truly great elixirs to plonk that’s best used to clean rusty hinges.

Indeed, defining a quality wine is not easy. It’s nearly impossible to define the word “quality” when it comes to wine. What does it really mean? Does it refer mainly to truly great wine, or is an inexpensive but tasty wine also one of quality?

One of the most successful wine brands in the world is Barefoot, an E&J Gallo product. A lot of people say these are quality wines. They appeal widely to U.S. wine buyers because they routinely sell for $7 a bottle and many people like them.

This is evident from the fact that Barefoot’s winemaker Jennifer Wall and a large team of winemakers produce some 17 million cases of Barefoot wines a year.

It’s clear that Gallo identified a truism for the U.S. wine market: A vintage date isn’t necessary with some wines. The key is a consistency of product quality.

That means that Wall tries to hit as close to the Barefoot house style of each varietal each year as she can and, from what I have tasted, she does an excellent job.

This is the same message I find in many large California wineries where the wines are rarely exciting, but are reliable daily beverages that don’t cost a lot.

But the word “vintage” does have meaning to fine-wine lovers who track small-production wines that sell for a lot more money. In fact, it’s the vintage more than any other factor that drives the price for many high-priced wines.

Wine lovers know that vintages matter, yet in the past two or three decades there have been curious changes in the way vintage quality is assessed. And it’s not necessarily a healthy thing for the industry.

Major wine writers identify the quality of a vintage as early as they can, to try to get the jump on their competitors. But early evaluations of vintage quality often are in need of revising as time tells us more. And few people ever go back and revise their assessments.

Within the past few months, I have tried a few 1997 California cabernet sauvignons from a vintage most experts said was heralded. The wines were, for the most part, fading fast.

During the same period, I have tried 1995 wines, from a vintage rated only “good” by most experts. The 1995s proved to be vastly more interesting.

Yet if you asked most wine lovers today what they thought of the two years, most would instantly say 1997 was better.

Now look at 2006 and 2007 North Coast wines. The 2006 red wines were a bit tart and not very appealing when they were released. The 2007s, by contrast, were voluptuous and easy to sell to people who loved the wines’ generosity.

It’s only eight years from the vintage, but the 2006 reds I have tasted are far better than they ever were, and the ’07s already seem a bit behind the ’06s in terms of depth and interest.

We have another pair of wines to assess: reds from 2011 and 2012. The former year was cool, and the wines lack much expansiveness. Comments on them have been only so-so; some merchants hate the wines.

By comparison, many 2012s are fruity and charming. Most people would say the 2012s are better. Time will tell, of course, but I’m betting that the 2011s will come around and prove that you can make great wine in a cool vintage.

Take vintage charts with a kilo of sodium.

Dan Berger lives in Sonoma County, where he publishesthe newsletter “Vintage Experiences.” Write to him at winenut@gmail.com.