Do we really need vintages? Most Champagne don’t and they’re doing quite nicely.
This was the challenge laid down by Robert Joseph at Winefuture last week and he left listeners mulling over it.
He asked producers why they thought they could get away with being so inconsistent. He has a point. While most wine geeks are interested in the vintage and how the rain/sun/hail affected the taste and structure of a wine; most couldn’t give a monkeys. They want consistent quality year in, year out. If the 2009 isn’t as good as the 2008 and they are the same price, how can that be understood by the average punter?
OK, many wine laws require the vintage to be stated on the bottle but it really wouldn’t make any difference to the consumer if Casillero del Diablo or Hardys had the vintage on the bottle or not. Plus, if you had a poor year then blending from older stocks (like they do in Champagne and in some parts of the new world), you would be able to deliver greater consistency. That’s all consumers want and what they expect from a brand. Joseph said: “The wine industry has no idea at all about brand identity…Consumers like simplicity and consistency: everything that wine doesn’t stand for.â€
What do you reckon?
