Shattering the Myth of Vintage Charts and Relying on a Taster’s Palate

There is so much to learn about wine that people whine. You have to memorize names of grapes, regions, sub-regions, soil types and barrel makers, strains of yeast, even what the phrase “Premier Cru” means.

Instead of memorizing any of this, some folks take a shortcut to instant wine knowledge. They memorize vintage charts that tell which vintages are the good years.

Some people carry vintage charts with them. The charts get dog-eared, but they act as insurance for the occasion when your distant cousin comes to town and you go out for dinner.

Comes the wine list; cousin asks you to pick a good wine; you, now on the spot, hustle off to the rest room (a ruse) just long enough to consult the trusty vintage chart. “Ah, yes, 1980.” Back at the table, you say, “Now where were we? Oh, the wine. We’ll have the 1980.” Sigh of relief.

The problems with this system are obvious. Mother Nature and Father Time can intervene. No matter how great a year Mother Nature produces, a poor wine maker can turn the best grapes into chicken soup. Father Time can ruin even the best of wines that are aged too long, or poorly.

Another problem: Vintage charts that give low rankings to some vintages may be inaccurate, meaning you’ll bypass some great values. (Everyone remembers the great 1975 Bordeaux vintage; most folks forget the good values available from that “poor” vintage 1976.)

One reason for this is that the individual who wrote the chart may have had a blind spot and ranked a vintage poorer than it should have been.

Oversold Year

One example of vintage-chart blindness, I believe, is with the 1982 Bordeaux. This was a vintage that was accorded the grandest of treatments even before the wines hit the market. It was a vintage so hyped and oversold that in some quarters it overshadowed “Rocky V” (or was it “Rocky VII”?).

Was the 1982 red Bordeaux as great as some said? I doubt it. I doubted it back then. I’ve been a skeptic about 1982 Bordeaux since the first day, feeling the vintage was excessively plummy, too ripe and lacking the acidity needed to age well.

I was not alone in this. A friend and wine merchant from Sacramento called me after he read an article I wrote in 1984, stating my case. He said I was courageous to buck the trend. Everyone loved the ‘82s, he said, except me and he.

I said I tasted the wines blind and found them less than a perfect score on a vintage chart, and he said he agreed, but that both of us were considered daft.

Within the last few weeks, the subject was brought back to mind. First, Frank Prial, the wine columnist at the New York Times, reported that some major buyers of ’82 Bordeaux are now expressing doubts about the greatness of the ’82 vintage.

And Kermit Lynch, a Berkeley wine merchant and one of the most knowledgeable men about wine, wrote that the ’82 Bordeaux wines weren’t so hot.

Lynch’s remarks were embedded in a three-part series he wrote in his newsletter, a series that said vintage charts were misleading. (His tone was decidedly stronger than that.)

So pointed was Lynch in his anti-vintage chart remarks that he printed what he called the Kermit Lynch Vintage Chart, under which was printed the phrase “cut out and save,” similar to a lot of vintage charts.

The only difference between Lynch’s vintage chart and others I have seen is that his was a rectangular box with nothing in it.

I agree with most of what Lynch says about the myth of the vintage chart. Too many people rely on them, and they tend to take the place of tasting the wine.

Lynch said he understood why there was so much reliance on vintage charts: “You don’t yet trust your own palate as much as you trust a rating or numerical score,” he wrote. This virtually echoes the comments a wine merchant made to me recently as he decried the fact that there were too many people “buying by number instead of by palate. Anything that rates a 90 is out the door in an hour.”

Lynch insists in his series that buyers are skeptical of merchants who make wine recommendations “because he (the merchant) is selling the wine. But you forget something important. The journalist is trying to sell his article, his paper or review. And what sells papers? Sensationalism over truth any day. (Maryland-based wine reviewer Robert) Parker became an oracle following his oft-quoted zeal for the 1982 Bordeaux. . . . I pity those who have endless 1982 Bordeaux in their cellars.”

Yet today, vintage charts still rate the 1982 Bordeaux as the “vintage of the century.” Ugh.

Hype for vintages generally begins in the cellars of those making the wine. Wine makers are notorious for declaring a vintage great even before the bubbles have quit popping in the fermentation tank. I’m always surprised when people believe this kind of commentary.

There’s lots of hype in the wine business. After the enthusiasm for the ’82 Bordeaux, there came as much enthusiasm for the 1983s, and then even the 1984s were talked of in reverence usually reserved for Michael Jackson.

Downgrading the 1984s

One year later, the 1984 Bordeaux reds wines were downgraded to merely “interesting” and “serviceable.” Ah, such precision is there in this business of vintage evaluation.

I recall with amusement the excitement some folks generated after they tasted their first sips of the 1978 California Cabernet Sauvignons. The wines were generally overripe and wine makers knew it, but the headlines these wines got sold a lot of wine, so no one squealed.

Similar things happened for 1980 and 1982 California Cabernets. All three vintages are now fast going downhill (a few wines from each vintage remain in good shape). Yet the vintage charts all rank 1978, 1980 and 1982 as “great” years in California.

By the way, I loaded up on the 1981s; the fact that my son Adam was born in 1981 had only a little to do with that fact.

Another example of vintage-chart blindness: After the 1982 Bordeaux got such press, a lot of people bought them and ignored the 1981 Bordeaux, which were more classic wines in many ways. The ‘81s had a better chance to age than the ‘82s, I felt. (A recent tasting of ‘81s versus ‘82s indicates that the former are outliving the latter.)

Some time ago I recommended here a 1984 Pio Cesare Barbera d’Alba as a Wine of the Week selection. A friend, recalling that 1984 was supposedly a lackluster year in Italy but that 1985 was a great vintage, asked me why I didn’t recommend the ’85 instead.

Look at Producers, Not Vintages

I replied that I chose the ’84 because it tasted great and that the ’85 was a tad more expensive.

But more to the point, I said, I don’t look at vintages as much as I look at producers. The good ones generally make good wines every year, and the Pio Cesare wine was very good no matter what the vintage chart showed.

Near the end of his three-part essay on vintage charts, Lynch wrote, “Trust the great wine makers, trust the great vineyards. . . . In the long run, that vintage chart may be your least important guide to quality.”

Vintage Charts Doubtful

I might not state it so strongly because some elements of a vintage chart are important. On a vintage chart that uses a one-through-10 scale, the 1972 vintage in Bordeaux would be rated a two or a one. It means: avoid this wine. I have no quarrel with that assessment.

However, sometimes the chart is no help at all. Let’s say you’re holding a wine list that has Bordeaux from 1969 and from 1977 at the same price. Both vintages are rated about equal in terms of quality (perhaps a four on a scale of 10). So the ’69 looks like the better buy because it’s older, right?

Yet here the vintage chart is no help. Virtually every ’69 I’ve had recently was shot, undrinkable; many ‘77s are still enjoyable.

Yet here there is an even worse pitfall. Assume you now know that ’69 wasn’t a great year in Bordeaux and you find a bottle of 1969 Corton on a wine list or in a shop at a reasonable price. Do you avoid it?

I wouldn’t. Because although 1969 produced poor-quality Bordeaux, it was a truly great year in Burgundy.

If all of this is getting confusing, you might adhere to Lynch’s admonition to trust the great wine makers. Though even that can be a problem. Recently, I was shocked by the dull, uninteresting characteristics in two 1987 Chardonnays from Robert Mondavi and Beringer, two of the most reliable wineries in the business.

Local Merchants Help

So, you might think your local wine merchant at your local grocery story should be some help, right? Well, think about that for a minute: Here’s a guy who’s perhaps 20 years old who is not even the legal age to sip wine. How is he going to know the difference between a Pommard and a Pomerol?

It comes down to this: Get yourself a good wine merchant with a track record--one who knows wine, knows the difference between the vintages of each producer’s wine and who offers you these wines at a competitive price.

Then trust your own palate. Buy one bottle of a target wine, take it home and taste it, preferably with a friend who also is interested in wine. If you both like it and find there is value, go back and buy more.

Or better yet, try two wines of the same type, side by side, before making a decision on one of them.

Sound like too much trouble? Well, it beats consulting the Kermit Lynch Vintage Chart.

Wine of the Week: 1986 Meridien Napa Valley Chardonnay ($12)--I like Chardonnays that are lean and crisp, and this one is that. Good fruit and a lovely, crisp mouth-feel make it an excellent wine to go with seafood. However, it is now being offered with special wholesale discounts that permit it to be sold for less than $10 with full markup; some discounters may have it for less than $9.

Here’s why: Wine maker Chuck Ortman, who created the Meridien label, sold the brand recently to Beringer and accepted a position with Beringer’s new Meridien winery in Paso Robles. Future Meridien wines will be under a newly designed label and with a Paso Robles appellation, so Beringer is trying to dispose of older vintages with the old label that says Napa on it. A good buy at the regular price, a steal if discounted.