A Decree Regarding Vintage Charts
Somewhere in every wine shop hangs a chart declaring that a given year in a given region was a seven, or an eight, or a disaster.
These charts describe weather across an entire region, averaged. They are genuinely useful if you are buying a case blind, or gambling on a producer you have never encountered. They tell you the odds.
They tell you nothing whatsoever about the bottle in your hand. A meticulous grower in a difficult year makes better wine than a careless one in a glorious year, every single time, and the chart cannot see the difference. A great vintage merely means the mediocre producers got away with it.
Learn three or four producers you trust and follow them through good years and bad. You will drink better than the man with the chart, and you will drink far better than the man buying the celebrated vintage at the celebrated price, which is the year everything costs double.
Yours, with a raised brow and a raised glass,
