January 30 2007
We celebrated our 1st birthday at Good Grape last week and as I reviewed virtually everything I wrote over the course of the 12 months it gave me pause to look at some of the things I was proud of and a lot of the things that I wasn’t as proud of.
It was a year of wine growth for me, akin to that awkward year when you go from adolescence to puberty—all scratchy voice, pimply face and gangly coordination. I learned a lot along the way, mostly by questioning things, but answering with my own authoritative and contrarian voice. As the saying goes, frequently wrong, but never in doubt.
And, there are still a lot of wine related things I’m uncertain of and one of the things that I’d like to get better at is the interactive nature that makes blogs the powerful conversational tool that they are.
As a juxtaposition to that blog interaction and immediacy, if you’ve ever worked for a really large company and ever sat in a very senior management meeting then you know and understand that the people in the room, while in the grasp contextually of dynamics and some information, are so far removed from the actual mechanics of a situation that it renders any real analysis null and void and especially null and void to make a concrete decision based on facts.
This leads me to vintage charts. I have very mixed feelings on wine vintage charts.
As I was reading along in the subscriber only section portion of Wine Spectator online and looking at their exhaustive vintage charts, I asked myself if these really matter.
Let me offer a brief aside and say that I would provide an example of the WS Vintage Chart here, but, unfortunately the WS terms and agreements that I agreed to when I forked over my $49.95 for a year’s digital subscription prohibit me from, in their words:
You may not republish any portion of the Content in print or electronic media including but not limited to, any Internet, Intranet or extranet site. You may not incorporate the Content in any database, compilation, archive or cache. You may not distribute or participate in the distribution of any Content to others, whether or not for payment or other consideration, and you may not modify, copy, frame, cache, reproduce, sell, publish, transmit, display or otherwise use any portion of the Content. You may not scrape, cut and paste or otherwise copy our Content without permission.
Ahem. If this were in print the question begs to be asked whether I could actually provide my already read copy to a friend to read, based on their ownership of ALL the intellectual property. But, I digress.
Do vintage charts matter in the sense that they provide any usefulness to people to make purchase decisions? Clearly, somebody spends time on putting these things together—not just at Wine Spectator, but elsewhere and certainly many journalists preface their introductions to the wines they taste with flowery descriptions of what a good year it was in such and such locale.
I reviewed the 41 vintage charts that Wine Spectator provides and they are all perfunctory in the information presented. Does it matter that the Chilean ’04 vintage is rated an 88 overall? Does it matter that you can “Drink or Hold?” Does it matter that there was a:
“Cool start to growing season with warm finish, then harvest split by rains: Carmenère suffered while later-ripening Cabernet strong; whites harvested in excellent shape.”
In contrast, does it matter that the 2003 was rated a 91 and you can “Drink or Hold.” Does it matter that there was a:
“Cool start followed by a long season of warm days and cool nights; wines show power and structure from all major valleys.”
I just don’t see how and why this is important? If I’m in a store buying a bottle does any of this matter, particularly because I probably don’t have this information with me.
Somebody help me understand what I am missing. Aside from French and Italian wines and Napa Cabernet, I just don’t see how these pithy vintage charts matter much. And, even for French, Italian and Napa Cabernet I still don’t see how a 100,000 foot view of ’02 versus a ’03 is going to matter much.
Please convince me otherwise, tell me I’m a fool and naïve and a lot of other things. Leave a comment.
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