I've only recently started to take wine a bit more seriously than just
glugging it, so forgive me if this seems a naive question !!

The year quoted on a bottle of wine, is this the year that the grape was
harvested or the year that the wine was bottled (or something else ?)

The grape growing/wine producing calander is obviously different depending
upon the part of the world that the grape was grown so presumably a wine
from Europe marked as 2001 on the label is in reality a different age to a
wine from Australia marked as 2001 (by 6 months maybe ??).

There must be some simple rule to apply so a wines 'true' age can be judged.

Any advice ?

Thanks in advance,

Rich.

In article >,
says...
> The year quoted on a bottle of wine, is this the year that the grape was
> harvested or the year that the wine was bottled (or something else ?)
>
The year the grapes were harvested. Some wines also list the year of
bottling (Penfolds Grange is one that springs to mind).

> The grape growing/wine producing calander is obviously different depending
> upon the part of the world that the grape was grown so presumably a wine
> from Europe marked as 2001 on the label is in reality a different age to a
> wine from Australia marked as 2001 (by 6 months maybe ??).
>
Very true - the southern hemisphere harvest is around March/April while
the northern hemisphere harvest (for the same vintage year) will be
September/October.

> There must be some simple rule to apply so a wines 'true' age can be judged.
>
There is - see above.

Martin

On Thu, 26 Feb 2004 11:49:35 -0000, Martin G Bridges
> wrote:

>In article >,
m says...
>> The year quoted on a bottle of wine, is this the year that the grape was
>> harvested or the year that the wine was bottled (or something else ?)
>>
>The year the grapes were harvested.

I have come across an exception to this rule BTW - a Canadian Ice Wine
that was harvested in early January and dated the previous year!

(For EU wines there should also be a Lot number, from which you can
sometimes infer the year of bottling.)

--
Steve Slatcher
http://pobox.com/~steve.slatcher

Steve Slatcher > wrote:

>>The year the grapes were harvested.

> I have come across an exception to this rule BTW - a Canadian
> Ice Wine that was harvested in early January and dated the
> previous year!

The same exception applies to icewines from the EU.

M.

In ,
R1ch m> typed:

> The year quoted on a bottle of wine, is this the year that the
grape
> was harvested or the year that the wine was bottled (or
something
> else ?)


The year it was harvested.


> The grape growing/wine producing calander is obviously
different
> depending upon the part of the world that the grape was grown
so
> presumably a wine from Europe marked as 2001 on the label is in
> reality a different age to a wine from Australia marked as 2001
(by 6
> months maybe ??).


Yes, exactly.


> There must be some simple rule to apply so a wines 'true' age
can be
> judged.


No rule is really necessary. Your understanding is correct. All
you need to know is what hemisphere the wine was grown in.

--
Ken Blake
Please reply to the newsgroup

Martin G Bridges wrote:
> In article >,
> says...
>
>>The year quoted on a bottle of wine, is this the year that the grape was
>>harvested or the year that the wine was bottled (or something else ?)
>>
>
> The year the grapes were harvested.

Which isn't necessarily the year the grapes were
grown; I have a bottle of extremely late-harvest
desert wine harvested the first day or two of
2000 (Mondavi's Spyglass project).

Dana

"Steve Slatcher" > wrote in message
...
> On Thu, 26 Feb 2004 11:49:35 -0000, Martin G Bridges
> > wrote:
>
>> I have come across an exception to this rule BTW - a Canadian Ice Wine
> that was harvested in early January and dated the previous year!
>
You'll agree, I think, that these grapes grew in that previous year and
reflect the climate of said year and thus the wine was correctly labeled.
Anders