Barossa Wines – Vintage   

When speaking about Barossa wines, the term ‘vintage’ refers to the process of picking grapes and creating a finished product, wine.  A vintage wine is a bottle that is made from grapes which were grown and picked from one particular year, or vintage.  The term vintage is also used to denote quality with some fortified wines, such as a fortified port wine.  The majority of red and white wines are produced from a single vintage, which will be stated on the bottle’s label.  Sparkling wines, champagne, and many fortified wines are generally non-vintage and are often created from a blend of different vintages in order to maintain a particular taste over a long period of time with each year they are produced, with the exceptions of an outstanding quality year with vintage ports and vintage champagnes. 

It is accepted that a bottle labelled as a particular vintage is allowed to have a certain percentage of grapes which are not from that year.  In Australia, and Barossa wines this percentage is 15%, as is with New Zealand, America and Europe.  In South Africa and Chile the percentage is 25%. 

It is the climate during the period of the grape’s growth which has most effect on the vintage of a wine from year to year.  Different grape varieties react differently to weather conditions, for example Shiraz grapes respond better to dry, warm, sunny climates, such as with the Barossa wines that the region is renowned for.  And in cooler, wetter climates such as New Zealand where high quality Sauvignon Blanc wines are produced. 

Although the weather has a significant effect on the type of wine produced from vintage to vintage, a skilled winemaker can work with these variable climate changes and the effects they have on grape quality, taste, aroma, and the final product.  Through careful and experienced fermenting, blending and ageing of the wine, a winemaker can get the best out of grapes from each year. 

Many wines are meant to be consumed without being aged in the bottle for any great length of time, making their vintage less important.  However there are some wines, especially some Barossa wines of exceptional quality, which are renowned for their vintages.  These can be an excellent investment purchase, as these wines become better in quality and taste, more sought after, and fetch more money per bottle over time.  An excellent example of this is Penfolds ‘Grange’, probably the most well known of the Barossa wines, where some vintages are much more sought after than others, with some bottles fetching many thousands of dollars for a particular vintage. 

There is some debate as to actually how much each vintage can vary in the taste of the wines.  With the practice of winemaking becoming more and more skilled and technologically minded, it is thought in some professional wine circles that the effect of each vintage on grapes from one year to the next is becoming less and less distinguishable.