Vintage charts… I don’t like 'em. The pin-the-butterly-to-the-board “precision” is not only imprecise, it grates. I’m not saying they are not useful. I think they are for a lot of consumers.
As an alternative, I am suggesting a new form of vintage chart… one that gives general (by region) or specific (by property) rankings, not ratings, for the past ten years.
Here’s my take on the Medoc:
2009
2010
2015
2008
2012
2011
2014
2006
2007
2013
And on the Southern Rhone (with which I have a lot more experience):
2007
2010
2015
2009
2012
2006
2011
2014
2013
2008
YMWV - your mileage WILL vary. And yes, there can be nuances that are lost… such as red Bordeaux in 2013 being so much worse than any vintage since (fill in the blank), that being ranked last doesn’t begin to give you a hint of the magnitude of the disaster. (I should mention here that the three most influential wine publications in the U.S. respectively rated 2013 Medoc as average, very good and very good… but I was there. I tasted, and I spit).
I believe that this system of ranking could be as or more useful to consumers as the current system.
I can dig it… Might want to put dotted lines between where you think some groupings lie. I’d switch up 06 and 11 in the medoc and 09/12 in southern Rhone though.
But I definitely think you’re on to a more useful paradigm in terms of how we conceptualize the vintages. I’d also give them a classic v hedonistic descriptor since people like their own styles.
It’s always the simple thoughts that are the most thought provoking.
Curious as to why you would rate 2011 and 2012 above 2014 in Bordeaux. Can’t say that I’m willing to bust open my bottles to test, as they need a decade or more, but I don’t know that I’ve read any critical evaluations that have suggested that 2011 or 2012 are anywhere near as good as 2014 across the board. Just curious as to your thoughts on this.
I’ve been a bit out of the loop on Bordeaux wines for a while now, but I’d give the edge to 2010 over 2009.
As for S. Rhone, 2007 produced a lot of goopy wines and I wouldn’t put it up at the top…middle perhaps.
Great method for comparing vintages although like you mention it is important for terrible or top vintages to be noted. I’m sure you will catch some flak for the 2007 CDP ranking. Also, where would you rank 2005 for BDX? What about expanding back to 2000?
Regardless of if I agree or not with how you see the Medoc, but just using your choices as an example, how is that different than the following? My numbers are meant as examples, not to be taken literally.
It seems to me that there is more information for the consumer, provided they trust the rater, with using points. Points show the reader how far apart in scale the vintages are, in that writers opinion.
These days I’d definitely find descriptions of vintage ‘style’ (e.g. lighter & leaner or tannic: potentially overly so) more useful, though they are still awful generalisations.
At least with such descriptions, it involves less of the authors prejudices, something that becomes dangerous when leading critics have strong preferences towards particular styles. In those scenarios points (and rankings) can be counter-productive.
I think ratings (without the fluff of overrating) gives more info. The fifth or seventh best vintage in one decade may be much better or worse than the fifth or seventh best vintage of another decade.
For example, the worst vintages of the 70s in Bordeaux could be ranked as 1973, 1974, 1977, 1972. The worse four in the 1980s might be 1981, 1984, 1980, 1987. The is, IMHO, a huge difference between 1981 and 1973.
I have a couple of problems, a general one and then of course nitpicking some of your choices.
The general one is even when you reduce the size of the region to the Medoc, it is too large to be able to make judgements. I have seen minor storms in Saint Julien resulting in wide differences between chateaux either side of the D2. So when you look at a region that has Margaux to the South and 60 kilometers away Saint Estephe, the differences can be huge. Same for vintage charts, but I have ever liked them anyway. Lazy, when you have so much information about particular chateaux. If you have to do this, you will need some sort of score to separate the vintages, but would probably go with letters
Plus 1. I like many of the 1981 Medocs that I have tasted recently, and some right bank wines like L’Evangile and Trotanoy have blossomed into beautiful wines. Graves also did pretty well
The idea of ranking vintages is really no better than assigning them scores on a 100 point scale. It’s not only imprecise, for all the obvious reasons, but it tells you nothing about the general
style of the vintage.
If someone loves lots of ripe (overripe?) fruit, then they prefer Vintage A over a more “classic” Vintage B. But if I’m drinking the wine with a meal, Vintage B may be a much better choice
than just buckets of ripe fruit.
Vintage rankings are inherently non-specific, even if broken down by commune. I used to find their utility limited to helping me choose from a restaurant list full of unknowns and generating discussion with fellow wine geeks. Since the advent of smartphones, I don’t need them in restaurants. But they’re still good for getting a discussion going.
I agree with Howard that assigning scores gives a richer interpretation than a simple ranking. And with Ian that a brief commentary on the style of the vintage or why it deserves its rank/score is even more useful.
IMO the most useful chart to compare vintages would not include a ranking but rather to plot attributes on an X/Y axis. So you could have ripeness v structure (or any two variables) and plot them as appropriate. For me anyway, that would be far more helpful than seeing a number or a ranking. For instance, while 2009/2010 Bordeaux might be considered two of the best vintages in recent years, they seem fairly similar with the former being more flamboyant. You can’t get that with a number or a ranking.
Nothing gentlemanly about that C. From my point of view, it is below average, and apart from the need to fill a vertical, I would not buy a bottle. Nevertheless there will be some drinkable wines, but there wasn’t a sufficient discount to make them in the least bit attractive.
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