Lesson 03 · The vine
why the same bottle never tastes the same twice
What it is
A vintage is simply the year the grapes were picked. It is not another word for a great year: 2024 is a vintage just as much as 2015. The word judges nothing; it only dates. What changes from one vintage to the next is the weather, and above all whether it came at the right moment for the vine.
So the same wine, from the same grower, is never quite the same from one year to the next, and that is normal. Wine is not turned out identically on a production line every year. You cannot ask a craft grower for the sameness of a factory product. (The very big producers, closer to industry, get nearer to it by smoothing the differences out.)
What the weather can do
The vine needs water at some points, sun and warmth at others. Get the order or the dose wrong, and the trouble starts.
Château Maucoil · the Muscardin vines
Châteauneuf-du-Pape · along the vines at dusk
In the grape
All that weather ends up in the grape itself, and then in your glass.
A hot, dry year gives smaller, more concentrated berries. A rainy year swells them and dilutes them. Two recent French vintages show the contrast: 2024, a difficult year, with a lot of rain and heavy mildew pressure across much of the vineyard; and 2025, an earlier year, with a harvest widely praised for its quality.
The weather is never the same all over France at once. A vintage can be excellent in Bordeaux and difficult in Burgundy in the same year: frost, rain and heatwaves never hit every region to the same degree. So there is no such thing as a good or bad vintage for the whole country, only good or difficult ones, region by region.
Harvests start earlier and earlier. Fifty years ago, many French regions routinely picked in October. Today the end of August or the start of September has become normal.
At a glance
Frost can kill young shoots in a single night. Too much rain can spoil the flowering.
Hot and dry: small, concentrated berries. Rainy: swollen, diluted ones.
As picking day nears, rot can set in.
Fifty years ago, often October. Today, late August or early September.
A year on a label is not a decorative date. It is a whole year of weather, of decisions made in a hurry, and sometimes of relief or worry for a whole vineyard.
Try it at home
Next time you pick up a bottle, read the year as a summary, not a date. Ask where the wine comes from before you ask whether the year was good, because the answer changes region by region. "A 2024? A wet year in much of France. Let's see what this grower made of it." Nobody remembers every vintage. You only need to know what one is.
Chablis · in the plots · September 2026
The words
| millésime | vintage, the year the grapes were picked |
| vendange | the grape harvest |
| floraison | the vine's flowering, in spring |
| Botrytis cinerea | the rot that can set in near harvest |
| mildiou | downy mildew, a vine disease |
| gel · grêle | frost · hail |
| Mistral | the wind of the Rhône valley, a grower's ally after rain |
| précocité | earliness, how soon the harvest comes |