I'm soon going to make a short Tiktok video on the subject of "What Does the Vintage of a Wine Tell You?" And for the vast, vast, vast majority of people, it just tells them how old the wine is. Full stop. Which then has to be considered alongside what kind of wine it is and also when it was actually released - has it been on shelves for many years, or held back and actually a recent release? Even this will be more information than most can wrangle with, but it's the only piece of vintage that might be informative to a few of the many.
Beyond this age, the "vintage" only tells an average buyer that one year will likely be different than a different year, even though it's the same wine. And just the age discrepancy will make *some* difference even if there isn't any "vintage variation" in terms of style. And absolutely no one outside of the most obsessive of collectors will ever follow vintage charts, tracking which year gave what kind of wine in which regions. That's waaaay beyond what I'm willing to pay any attention to. And I'm a significant wine nerd/professional.
That is true, most people don’t have the energy or interest to pay much attention. And this might be very particular to the context in which I work, but I get a lot of questions from entry level tasters about what vintage means, because they hear more experienced folks talk about it, and we tend to bring it up at Montelena in vertical tastings. Age is a related but different question. So, a post like this might have limited interest, but I wanted to collect the kinds of things I talk about with my guests for those who might care.
I think a vertical tasting is a specific context where it's valuable, even necessarry, though I suspect not as valuable as winemakers think. It's valuable to know that different years are different, but no one is memorizing the differences, outside of maybe gloming onto a specific year as their favorite for that specific wine from that specific winery.
Customers are curious, no question, but they don't know which info is valuable or to what extent. That's where professionals come in, and honestly, I think we throw the wrong info at them. We give them info a winemaker cares about, but they're not winemakers, nor should they be. Drinkers shouldn't need a winemaker's knowledge to understand the product. And truly, they don't need to. I don't think they understand it at the level professionals do and we miss how un-useful it is when that's the case.
But since the professionals are essentially all winemakers and people learning directly under winemakers, we get trapped in not understanding the POV of anyone else. And wine remains niche and unapproachable for all but those willing to dive deep into a winemaker's level of knowledge.
I'm definitely not advocating that anyone obsessively memorize vintage charts. In the tasting room I'm talking less about specific vintages than giving guests a big picture about how we approach wine as an expression of our particular place, and then following their lead in terms of how far they want to delve into that. And a tasting room for a specific winery is very different from retail or a wine bar with many wine options; I rarely got into vintage variation in that context, and only with collectors or people who had heard that one vintage was better than another but weren't sure why. Or, as you mention, to talk about how long the wine had been on the shelf. Ha.
On some level I'm not sure what you're getting at in your comments, because I suspect (hope?) your point is not to tell me not to bother writing about topics like these that have fairly high levels of technical detail and may not be helpful or interesting to everyone, but that is indeed what you seem to be saying. I'm well aware this is a very niche topic within an already niche field. My goal is to be able to talk to wine consumers who have a variety of levels of experience, knowledge, and interest. In this case I'm talking to people who have some experience but have run up against something they don't understand. Not to tell them they need to care about it or memorize vintage charts or whatever, but so they know a little bit about why other people talk about these things and what they mean.
It's not appealing to all consumers, and it's not the super approachable, sexy thing that's going to get new people drinking wine, but I don't think most new consumers of wine are coming to wine blogs and reading long form content to find out whether wine appeals to them. I'm happy to leave the friendlier, entry level content to formats where newbies are more likely to encounter them: restaurants, stores, ads, Instagram, TikTok videos, etc. I still believe there is a place for public conversation about what is a more niche POV, and I hope that doesn't make wine feel unapproachable, but I suspect that people who find wine unapproachable aren't here to read it.
My original comment wasn't a disagreement at all, but an extention of what you'd already written. I did the thing where it was shared to Notes as well as acting as a "comment" so it was worded to not address you directly, as that makes a weird Note. It was addessed as a thought to other readers, not so much the writer of the piece. I wish comments would be flagged as "also shared on Notes" so that was more obvious, but that is what it is, I guess. Maybe I should add a final line stating that - "(also shared on Notes)" Or just choose to do one or the other and not try to shortcut.
But then the follow up comment I did want to quibble a little with, but again, it's not a personal "Why did you write this post" argument/thought. Just questioning out loud how truly useful winemaker-level knowledge is for consumers, even most committed wine nerds. And why we always think it is. And consumers follow our lead, so they'll go down whatever rabbit hole we offer them as useful knowledge, but the queestion is how much do they understand the product or the details - such as the vintage - when we're done doing the default thing the industry asks us to do. This isn't on you: this is what we're told to say, and teach, and how to engage. But I do question it.
Gotcha. I did see that you had shared it to Notes as well, but the second response made it seem a bit more oppositional and I found myself uncertain of what conversation we were really having. I think I understand where you're coming from now. That said, I'm still not sure I entirely agree. Again, I do agree that the vast majority of consumers will not care about some of these things, and don't need to. I think we're on the same page that it doesn't help the industry overall to present them as things consumers *must* know to access or enjoy wine, so that's a line I try not to cross. At the same time, I do find that some people share my curiosity about the details behind their wine, and it's equally unhelpful to shut that down and act as though none of it matters. Will they pursue these lines of thought further and gain full understanding of the product or vintage? Maybe, maybe not, but I've given them some tools to do so if they so desire. I'm not a long-time industry person and no one told me what to say or teach or how to engage. I share the things that interest me and the things that have been helpful for me to learn along the way, and I hope it's helpful to others who want to understand more about what they enjoy drinking.
What I wonder from your comments is, what level of knowledge IS useful? And can we really assume our customers can't or don't want to learn? If anything, working in wine has surprised me with how many people do want to understand more about what they drink.
Whoof busy days, took me a minute to be able to write this repsonse. I've been thinking a lot on this topic lately, and poking at a longer article that I haven't fully committed to yet, but the thoughts have been percolating for a while now. Especially as I teach a class for non-industry people, this is a reality I encounter regularly. So there was probably a lot of context in my head that didn't quite shine through in the comment itself.
First off, I 100% agree that more people are deeply curious about wine than are not. This isn't the typical wine argument that "people don't care, just let them enjoy the wine!" which is a statement I disagree with. Goig back to how I teach a class for "normies", I find that most people are DEEPLY interested. They don't know where to begin, don't know what to ask, they're usually walking around parrotting/repeating en vougue statements about wine but not really grasping what any of it means.
The part that I do question is what you directly asked me at the end there: what level of knowledge IS useful? And I'm not sure "level" is the right word, but more: how do we communicate fundamentals of any level without traipsing into the nitty gritty that's only useful to a professional?
This is more than a comment can really relate, but in brief: I think our biggest blinders-on spot is: terroir. And all that comes with it.
Terroir is like the Unified Theory of Everything for wine. It's Super String Theory. It's cool and interesting and grabs people's attention. Everyone can understand the fundameental concept, but no one can actually understand the details and the finer points of Super String Theory without understanding Relativity and Particle Physics. And you can't understand Relativity without understanding Newtonian Physics. You can't understand Particle Physics without understanding Atomic Theory. And the list goes on. Many people buy and read books and wactch docs, etc. on Super Strings. But how many of them actually understand it? Beyond the attention grabbing headline-style catch phrases, the neat-o concepts you can shove into a single statement or two?
People understand that grapes grown in different places produce different results/wines. But no normal person should be breaking down southward facing slopes and drainage and soil types and canopy use and how vine roots work and yada yada yada. You should only need to know that stuff if you're planting and managing a vineyard. Winemaking nitty gritty only if you're a winemaker, pH levels and the different types of acidity and macerations and whatever.
There's a way to bring all this knowledge back to a more fundamental Newtonian Physics version of wine knowledge. The practical stuff that helps consumers understand what they're drinking and why you can - generally - lump certain wines into a certain small number of style camps. And then from there, the fact that most wines, even in the same camp, will still differ from each other in small (and in exceptional cases significant) ways that has to do with too many factors for anyone who doesn't want to commit their life to the product will ever understand. So they should know it can happen, but they don't need to know all the ways it happens. Especially as most bottles don't even give this info. We always complain that people get hung up on grape varieties or places, but that's because they're the only pieces of information we regularly give them when they're shopping.
Some of us decide to go all in and become professionals in wine, in some fashion or another. But that's where our own litmus tests fail us is figuring out what's useful for those who don't. We know what drew us in, but it drew us IN. What we need to figure out, to a better degree than we have, imo, is how to give non-professionals and non-wannabe-professionals confidence in wine that doesn't require a professional's specificity of knowledge.
I'm soon going to make a short Tiktok video on the subject of "What Does the Vintage of a Wine Tell You?" And for the vast, vast, vast majority of people, it just tells them how old the wine is. Full stop. Which then has to be considered alongside what kind of wine it is and also when it was actually released - has it been on shelves for many years, or held back and actually a recent release? Even this will be more information than most can wrangle with, but it's the only piece of vintage that might be informative to a few of the many.
Beyond this age, the "vintage" only tells an average buyer that one year will likely be different than a different year, even though it's the same wine. And just the age discrepancy will make *some* difference even if there isn't any "vintage variation" in terms of style. And absolutely no one outside of the most obsessive of collectors will ever follow vintage charts, tracking which year gave what kind of wine in which regions. That's waaaay beyond what I'm willing to pay any attention to. And I'm a significant wine nerd/professional.
That is true, most people don’t have the energy or interest to pay much attention. And this might be very particular to the context in which I work, but I get a lot of questions from entry level tasters about what vintage means, because they hear more experienced folks talk about it, and we tend to bring it up at Montelena in vertical tastings. Age is a related but different question. So, a post like this might have limited interest, but I wanted to collect the kinds of things I talk about with my guests for those who might care.
I think a vertical tasting is a specific context where it's valuable, even necessarry, though I suspect not as valuable as winemakers think. It's valuable to know that different years are different, but no one is memorizing the differences, outside of maybe gloming onto a specific year as their favorite for that specific wine from that specific winery.
Customers are curious, no question, but they don't know which info is valuable or to what extent. That's where professionals come in, and honestly, I think we throw the wrong info at them. We give them info a winemaker cares about, but they're not winemakers, nor should they be. Drinkers shouldn't need a winemaker's knowledge to understand the product. And truly, they don't need to. I don't think they understand it at the level professionals do and we miss how un-useful it is when that's the case.
But since the professionals are essentially all winemakers and people learning directly under winemakers, we get trapped in not understanding the POV of anyone else. And wine remains niche and unapproachable for all but those willing to dive deep into a winemaker's level of knowledge.
I'm definitely not advocating that anyone obsessively memorize vintage charts. In the tasting room I'm talking less about specific vintages than giving guests a big picture about how we approach wine as an expression of our particular place, and then following their lead in terms of how far they want to delve into that. And a tasting room for a specific winery is very different from retail or a wine bar with many wine options; I rarely got into vintage variation in that context, and only with collectors or people who had heard that one vintage was better than another but weren't sure why. Or, as you mention, to talk about how long the wine had been on the shelf. Ha.
On some level I'm not sure what you're getting at in your comments, because I suspect (hope?) your point is not to tell me not to bother writing about topics like these that have fairly high levels of technical detail and may not be helpful or interesting to everyone, but that is indeed what you seem to be saying. I'm well aware this is a very niche topic within an already niche field. My goal is to be able to talk to wine consumers who have a variety of levels of experience, knowledge, and interest. In this case I'm talking to people who have some experience but have run up against something they don't understand. Not to tell them they need to care about it or memorize vintage charts or whatever, but so they know a little bit about why other people talk about these things and what they mean.
It's not appealing to all consumers, and it's not the super approachable, sexy thing that's going to get new people drinking wine, but I don't think most new consumers of wine are coming to wine blogs and reading long form content to find out whether wine appeals to them. I'm happy to leave the friendlier, entry level content to formats where newbies are more likely to encounter them: restaurants, stores, ads, Instagram, TikTok videos, etc. I still believe there is a place for public conversation about what is a more niche POV, and I hope that doesn't make wine feel unapproachable, but I suspect that people who find wine unapproachable aren't here to read it.
My original comment wasn't a disagreement at all, but an extention of what you'd already written. I did the thing where it was shared to Notes as well as acting as a "comment" so it was worded to not address you directly, as that makes a weird Note. It was addessed as a thought to other readers, not so much the writer of the piece. I wish comments would be flagged as "also shared on Notes" so that was more obvious, but that is what it is, I guess. Maybe I should add a final line stating that - "(also shared on Notes)" Or just choose to do one or the other and not try to shortcut.
But then the follow up comment I did want to quibble a little with, but again, it's not a personal "Why did you write this post" argument/thought. Just questioning out loud how truly useful winemaker-level knowledge is for consumers, even most committed wine nerds. And why we always think it is. And consumers follow our lead, so they'll go down whatever rabbit hole we offer them as useful knowledge, but the queestion is how much do they understand the product or the details - such as the vintage - when we're done doing the default thing the industry asks us to do. This isn't on you: this is what we're told to say, and teach, and how to engage. But I do question it.
Gotcha. I did see that you had shared it to Notes as well, but the second response made it seem a bit more oppositional and I found myself uncertain of what conversation we were really having. I think I understand where you're coming from now. That said, I'm still not sure I entirely agree. Again, I do agree that the vast majority of consumers will not care about some of these things, and don't need to. I think we're on the same page that it doesn't help the industry overall to present them as things consumers *must* know to access or enjoy wine, so that's a line I try not to cross. At the same time, I do find that some people share my curiosity about the details behind their wine, and it's equally unhelpful to shut that down and act as though none of it matters. Will they pursue these lines of thought further and gain full understanding of the product or vintage? Maybe, maybe not, but I've given them some tools to do so if they so desire. I'm not a long-time industry person and no one told me what to say or teach or how to engage. I share the things that interest me and the things that have been helpful for me to learn along the way, and I hope it's helpful to others who want to understand more about what they enjoy drinking.
What I wonder from your comments is, what level of knowledge IS useful? And can we really assume our customers can't or don't want to learn? If anything, working in wine has surprised me with how many people do want to understand more about what they drink.
Whoof busy days, took me a minute to be able to write this repsonse. I've been thinking a lot on this topic lately, and poking at a longer article that I haven't fully committed to yet, but the thoughts have been percolating for a while now. Especially as I teach a class for non-industry people, this is a reality I encounter regularly. So there was probably a lot of context in my head that didn't quite shine through in the comment itself.
First off, I 100% agree that more people are deeply curious about wine than are not. This isn't the typical wine argument that "people don't care, just let them enjoy the wine!" which is a statement I disagree with. Goig back to how I teach a class for "normies", I find that most people are DEEPLY interested. They don't know where to begin, don't know what to ask, they're usually walking around parrotting/repeating en vougue statements about wine but not really grasping what any of it means.
The part that I do question is what you directly asked me at the end there: what level of knowledge IS useful? And I'm not sure "level" is the right word, but more: how do we communicate fundamentals of any level without traipsing into the nitty gritty that's only useful to a professional?
This is more than a comment can really relate, but in brief: I think our biggest blinders-on spot is: terroir. And all that comes with it.
Terroir is like the Unified Theory of Everything for wine. It's Super String Theory. It's cool and interesting and grabs people's attention. Everyone can understand the fundameental concept, but no one can actually understand the details and the finer points of Super String Theory without understanding Relativity and Particle Physics. And you can't understand Relativity without understanding Newtonian Physics. You can't understand Particle Physics without understanding Atomic Theory. And the list goes on. Many people buy and read books and wactch docs, etc. on Super Strings. But how many of them actually understand it? Beyond the attention grabbing headline-style catch phrases, the neat-o concepts you can shove into a single statement or two?
People understand that grapes grown in different places produce different results/wines. But no normal person should be breaking down southward facing slopes and drainage and soil types and canopy use and how vine roots work and yada yada yada. You should only need to know that stuff if you're planting and managing a vineyard. Winemaking nitty gritty only if you're a winemaker, pH levels and the different types of acidity and macerations and whatever.
There's a way to bring all this knowledge back to a more fundamental Newtonian Physics version of wine knowledge. The practical stuff that helps consumers understand what they're drinking and why you can - generally - lump certain wines into a certain small number of style camps. And then from there, the fact that most wines, even in the same camp, will still differ from each other in small (and in exceptional cases significant) ways that has to do with too many factors for anyone who doesn't want to commit their life to the product will ever understand. So they should know it can happen, but they don't need to know all the ways it happens. Especially as most bottles don't even give this info. We always complain that people get hung up on grape varieties or places, but that's because they're the only pieces of information we regularly give them when they're shopping.
Some of us decide to go all in and become professionals in wine, in some fashion or another. But that's where our own litmus tests fail us is figuring out what's useful for those who don't. We know what drew us in, but it drew us IN. What we need to figure out, to a better degree than we have, imo, is how to give non-professionals and non-wannabe-professionals confidence in wine that doesn't require a professional's specificity of knowledge.