Vintage Misconceptions About Wine

Two of the most clichéd wine terms we will ever hear relate to the moment in time when a bottle of wine was produced. “A good year” and “vintage wine” are often thrown casually into a conversation without a firm grip on what the phrases actually mean. A “good year” would suggest that all of the variables and nuances of climate were in complete harmony when this or that wine came into being. A “vintage wine” simply implies an old wine, like a vintage roadster or vintage clothing, without attaching a specific year.

When we refer to a wine’s vintage, we are not saying that it is necessarily old. Vintage identifies the year the grapes in that wine were harvested. A wine from the 1994 vintage would be considered old; the 2026 vintage is still on the vine (except in the Southern Hemisphere, where harvest for 2026 has just been completed). The year of the harvest – its vintage – will almost always appear somewhere on the label and often on the cork as well. This is important information that will relate to quality but does not assume a “good year.” We can debate corks and screw caps another time.