Vintage charts

Appears in
Le Cordon Bleu Matching Wine with Food
Le Cordon Bleu Matching Wine with Food

By Le Cordon Bleu

Published 2010

  • About
Found in wine reference books and magazines, these offer a rating for a particular wine over a whole range of vintages. They can be extremely useful to refer to when choosing wine with which you are unfamiliar, but bear the following points in mind:
  • They can give only snapshots of specific vintages. For example, 1996, which is thought to be a very fine vintage in Bordeaux as a region, was not nearly as good in the districts of St Emilion and Pomerol (on the right bank of the Gironde river) as it was in Médoc and Graves (on the left bank).
  • They are quantitative not qualitative. In Germany, for instance, 1989 and 1990 are both great vintages but have completely different characters - the 1989 being luscious but low in acidity, the 1990 being firmer, with higher acidity and greater potential for longevity.
  • They take no account of the influence and skill of the producer. So vintages such as 1987 in Burgundy, 1991 in Bordeaux, and 1998 in California may have been written off generally as mediocre, but you will often find that top properties still made excellent wines.