A Case For Buying Bad Vintages Pt. 2
If it's wrong, I don't wanna be right.
In Part 1, I got all teary about how tasting a wine can wake you up to the apocalyptic kind of pre-gaming we’re doing as a species. Vintage variation can tell us precisely what’s going on with nature, and if you study wine, you might find yourself saying...um. We’re gonna die. I can literally taste it.
For me, I’m imagining it in the voice of Cher Horowitz a la Clueless.
For part two, I spoke with two winemakers who helped me understand that there is a more nuanced conversation begging to be had when we feel tempted to use words like “good” and “bad” when talking about vintage.
What’s a bad vintage?
Working in hospitality, you hear the good/bad conversation often. I’ve come to think that we might respond to comments around good and bad with: what was bad about it? What was the challenge? Or: why was it good? What worked out?
Because sometimes this can be a really subjective thing, and sometimes it can just be something someone heard and repeated. “I think what people are actually saying when they say something is a good vintage, it revolves around regions like Bordeaux, where you hear: this was an excellent vintage in Bordeaux,” Brianne Day of Day Wines told me. “And suddenly the price goes up and the demand is there, and that’s because a bunch of wine writers decided that that was a good vintage and this is a safe time to spend money.”
But in non-European wine regions like Oregon, where Day makes her wine, winemakers don’t work within the constraints that European winemakers do. They have more freedom to pivot and work with the challenges that each year presents, rather than work against them.
Challenges are opportunities for the winemaker to shine
Jim Adelman, head winemaker at Au Bon Climat Winery told me that it’s what the winemaker does with each vintage that makes the wine. “There are better, and occasionally great, vintages, and difficult vintages, but you can find successes and failures in both,” he wrote me. “What is important is that a winery have a good, experienced winemaker. Experience is particularly important in difficult years.”
My first lesson in this was when I was introduced to Brianne Day’s ‘Lemonade’ rosé at a local wine bar. When her Pinot Noir grapes were affected by smoke from the 2020 wildfires, she kept the grapes, took off the smoke-covered skins, and made a really lovely rosé she dubbed “Lemonade.”
A perfect nod to her choice to pivot, and a great way to appeal to my Beyoncé heart.
Day finds sameness in wine boring. “Our job is not just to take perfect fruit and make good wine out of it. That’s a pretty low bar,” Day says. “ Our job is to make good wine every vintage, and vintage variation is one of the cool things about wine. I mean, I love it when I go back and taste something from whatever vintage and call to mind what the circumstances of that year were that created that product.”
How to shop the good stuff every year
Day and Adelman both agree that when the vintage causes the flagship grape of a region to suffer, you can shop for other varietals that might have fared better in that particular weather.
After all, every grape reacts to weather patterns and climatic shifts differently. In the same neighborhood, one might shine and another might suffer. Either way, the winemakers’ task is to make something compelling.
This is a great opportunity for you to discover what the locals of every wine region know: that there’s so much more incredible wine than the one/s that everyone knows about. Plus, since they’re not benefiting from the reputation of being the golden child of their respective regions, they’re usually more affordable for you.
Day also told me that as a consumer, it’s about trusting who you buy your wine from. “Trust the people you buy from to steer you in the right direction—even in a problematic year, there are still good wines that are made.”
Here’s to the good, the bad, and the delightful confusion found in between.