Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
There isn't a raw fruit/vegetable supplier in the world who can deliver
a consistent product year after year. Crops just don't grow that way.
That is why people make such a big deal about ranking the "year"
that a wine is bottled - the wine producers have figured out how to
take normal product variation and turn it into a selling point - but the
same variation exists in all food products. It is just that people have
been led (or misled) by the food producers to believe that the taste
of something like grape juice is going to be exactly the same every
year but wine from the same locality will vary every year.

Generally it is the same. It's the same because the grape juice, or
wine is made from a blend of juices mixed to have a particular taste.

The thing that makes the difference so noticable, or not is the variety
of grapes that they can choose from. A company like Gallo buys an enourmous
amount of grapes, probably from all over the world. A small vineyard in
France has to use only what they grow so their wine is affected more.

That's why unsweetened applessauce or unsalted butter is more expensive too,
a higher quality product is only produced by higher quality ingredients
not by mixing cheap and expensive ones and adding things to make it taste
"right".

A wine without a vintage (year) may be combinations of several years
to get a consistent product.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM