Arts & Manners: Good Wine and Godliness

During the last few years, an increasing number of California wine producers have adopted the habit of vintage-dating more and more of their wines, as the French and Germans have done for their better vintages for a long time. The reasons for this are both good and bad. Good, because it is a good thing for wine lovers to get as much information about a wine as they can, especially with wines from the variable climates of Europe. Obviously the vintage year enables one to tell one year’s vintage from another. Bad, because of the snobbery inbred in far too many American wine drinkers. They think they get a better and more kulturny wine when there is a date on the label, so the producers of this bottle get more money for it, whether the wine deserves it or not. Reputable producers of course only vintage-date where it is right, disposing of their lesser wines under a generic label, but there are also quite a number who do overprice the vintage-dated bottles. Putting a date on the bottle means only that the wine was made in a specific year, but it does not guarantee quality because the vintages can vary and do vary from region to region and vineyard to vineyard, not only in Europe, but in California as well. Also, various wines of the same kind, say Cabernet Sauvignons, though of the same vintage year, develop differently, depending on how they are made, how long they are in the cask, when they were bottled, and how long the bottle aged. Still, it is very useful to see when a wine was made, provided it was made right—especially a white wine, which should not get too old.

The Christian Brothers of California, one of the nation’s leading producers of fine wines, which they export to 45 countries throughout the world, do not vintage-date their wines, deliberately so. As their eminent winemaster and head of their large technical staff, Dr. Leonard Berg (past President of the American Society of Enologists), explained to me during a recent visit to their Mount La Salle Winery in the Napa Valley, to make a wine from the same grape type but of different ages offers the winemaker a greater range of choices and possibilities for complexity of taste and aroma. What the Christian Brothers also aim for, and almost always achieve, is to provide the consumer with a consistency and continuity of fine quality, which to you and me means that the next bottle is going to be as good as the first, or at least, the same. This is a good thing indeed, when I think how often I’ve fallen flat on my face with bottles splendid in one year and horrid in another.

NH

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Nika Hazelton

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During the last few years, an increasing number of California wine producers have adopted the habit of vintage-dating more and more of their wines, as the French and Germans have done for their better vintages for a long time. The reasons for this are both good and bad. Good, because it is a good thing for wine lovers to get as much information about a wine as they can, especially with wines from the variable climates of Europe. Obviously the vintage year enables one to tell one year’s vintage from another. Bad, because of the snobbery inbred in far too many American wine drinkers. They think they get a better and more kulturny wine when there is a date on the label, so the producers of this bottle get more money for it, whether the wine deserves it or not. Reputable producers of course only vintage-date where it is right, disposing of their lesser wines under a generic label, but there are also quite a number who do overprice the vintage-dated bottles. Putting a date on the bottle means only that the wine was made in a specific year, but it does not guarantee quality because the vintages can vary and do vary from region to region and vineyard to vineyard, not only in Europe, but in California as well. Also, various wines of the same kind, say Cabernet Sauvignons, though of the same vintage year, develop differently, depending on how they are made, how long they are in the cask, when they were bottled, and how long the bottle aged. Still, it is very useful to see when a wine was made, provided it was made right—especially a white wine, which should not get too old.

The Christian Brothers of California, one of the nation’s leading producers of fine wines, which they export to 45 countries throughout the world, do not vintage-date their wines, deliberately so. As their eminent winemaster and head of their large technical staff, Dr. Leonard Berg (past President of the American Society of Enologists), explained to me during a recent visit to their Mount La Salle Winery in the Napa Valley, to make a wine from the same grape type but of different ages offers the winemaker a greater range of choices and possibilities for complexity of taste and aroma. What the Christian Brothers also aim for, and almost always achieve, is to provide the consumer with a consistency and continuity of fine quality, which to you and me means that the next bottle is going to be as good as the first, or at least, the same. This is a good thing indeed, when I think how often I’ve fallen flat on my face with bottles splendid in one year and horrid in another.