Category: Wine

Driving home from work the other day, I caught another of NPR’s excellent stories about global warming. In the teaser for the segment, the announcer said something about “a positive side to climate change,” and I immediately knew we were going to hear about wine.

For some reason, the only upside anyone can seem to find to global warming is that France has been having record highs, which has resulted in ultra-fruity, superripe, California-style Bordeaux and Burgundy. This is the kind of wine that Wine Ratings God Robert Parker gives 10,000 points to, which sells wine, which is definitely good news for French wineries.

Not so good news for warm-weather climates, though, this global warming. The NPR story focused on Spain, and had a Spanish winemaker talking about planting in the foothills of the Pyrenees, hoping for cooler temps there.

What really caught my ear in this story, though, was not the discussion of rising temps and their fears effects on our agriculture. No, what I thought was so interesting (not that disaster isn’t interesting, my apologies to the 4 horseman and all) was the comment by Albert Puch of wine giant Torres that vintage variations, once a given in the minds of European winemakers and consumers, is no longer an excuse for mediocre or bad wine.

Que que?

Some background: Old World wineries (winespeak glossary — Old World = wine regions in Europe; New World = wine regions everywhere else) trained their consumers long ago on the vintage system: if you wanted to know which of their wines were the best, you needed to memorize which vintages were the most successful. Of course, every wine maker does her best with every harvest, but sometimes your weather is great and sometimes it’s crap and it’s hard to control that, even in France.

Then, when everyone agreed that average vintages were a shame but what could you do?, New World wineries started bringing vintage after vintage to the table with no variation in quality. Regions like Australia, California, Chile, even Washington all have very predictable weather, and could make a wine that tasted the same year after year after year after year… You know when you buy a bottle of Chateas Ste Michelle Riesling or Jacob’s Creek Shiraz and you enjoy it, you can buy another one next year and it’ll be equally likeable. Victory! No more vintage charts!

Old World winemakers fought back, charging that their wine had very much specialness in it that made it better than predictably drinkable New World wines do not. They can’t really tell us what that is, but it’s there, and you’re missing out if you drink tasty new world wine all the time. And lots of people beleived them for a long time, feeling undisciplined and bourgeouis when they forgot their vintage cheat sheet at home and had to buy something they simply knew they liked, without remembering whether hail fell in the Rhone Valley in 2002.

Hearing someone from Torres saying that they needed to find places that weren’t going to provide unpredictable harvests was like hearing the fashion editor of Vogue say she was going to have to write about some shoes for women that don’t hurt our feet. Finally, the cart is placed behind the horse where it belongs, and you, gentle reader, are in the driver’s seat. Giddup!

Wine marketing frequently throws normal advertising rules out the window, when it comes to Americans. We love all things new, right? Bright, shiny and new: new iPhone, new house, new car, new Hollywood star, new bestseller… in a world in which technology seems to be accelerating life, we work harder and harder to keep current.

So why does the term “Old Vines” have such cachet with us? It sells the crap out of wine, let me tell you. It’s one of those terms that, when a wine-nervous consumer sees it, makes her feel that she’s in good hands. Don’t worry, say the Old Vines, we’ve been around the block a few times and we’ll treat you right.

And Old is supposedly a good thing when it comes to wine, right? Wine ages, and gets better with age (sometimes). “Old Vines,” though, refers to the age of the vines producing the grapes producing the juice producing the wines, though — not the wine itself. Apart from the comforting sense that at least something is old about the bottle you’re buying, what is it about old vines that makes a winery think they should put it on the label?

In Europe, where they invented the term (Fr: vieilles vignes), wine producers slap the Old Vines on a bottle to brag about how long wine’s been made on their land. It makes sense, if you are a devotee  of terrior , the concept that what makes a wine good is the land its grapes come from. Older vines have deeper, more complex root structures that, according to some terrior believers, bring unique, irreplaceable elements to the wine grapes.

Especially in Europe, vieille vignes also implies that the people making the wine have been doing so for generations, and therefore really know what they’re doing.

Ironically enough, though the Old Vine mystique was born in Europe, it is now many non-European vineyards that can boast some of the oldest vines in the world, Chile, Australia and California in particular.

Australia’s Barossa Valley: Hewitson’s Mourvedre planted in 1853
Maipo Valley in Chile: Merlot planted in 1863 at Cousino Macul
California’s Amador County: Zinfandel planted in 1886 by Joseph Davis

We can blame this on the phylloxera blight of the late 1800s, which all but annihilated the wine industry in Europe until it was discovered that native US rootstock was immune to the disease. European varietals were grafted onto new rootstock, which saved the day, but it means that many of the greatest, most expensive wines in Europe come from vines that were planted less than 100 years ago.

There is one other reason to prize the old vine, and that is yield. As vines age, they naturally produce fewer grapes, but those grapes are said to be more intense and packed with flavor and complexity. It’s as if all the energy of the grapevine is concentrated into fewer grapes, but better grapes.

The problem with the term “old vines” is that it’s completely unregulated, even in France, where they love them some wine regulations. So while any of the reasons to choose a wine made from really old vines are good, it’s hard to tell who to trust. Is Winery X’s definition of old 20 years? 30 years? Or are we talking 100 or 130 years old here?

Sussing this out is mostly a matter of knowing your regions and varietals, unfortunately. I’m not shocked to hear of 100-year-old Zinfandel vines in California, but I’d be surprised to hear of 100-year-old Sauvignon Blanc vines there. I’ll believe almost any vine is super-old in Australia, because way back in the mid-1800s James Busby, a very serious Australian wine evangelist, collected all the varietals he could from Europe, and spread the gospel of grapes. I know that in Spain’s craggy hills and valleys lie vineyards that time and the modern world had forgotten until very recently, and so a $10 bottle made from 80 year-old-vines is feasible.

In the end, though, the term Old Vines on a bottle means less to me than the region, the winery, the price, and the grape. It’s always nice to drink the juice of historical grapes, but only if the wine is well-made, and is appropriate to the food and/or the setting.