What's in a Vintage?

I had the happy fortune of being young(ish) and single and therefore with a sizeable amount of disposable income in the early 1990's. Politically it was not the most encouraging of times - Major's Britain - highway cone hotlines and the Citizen's Charter come to mind. Therefore heavy drinking was, by necessity, the order of the day. My parents had moved to France in the late 1980's and, surprise, surprise, had chosen Bordeaux as the region to settle in. They bought me a mixed case of mainly reds from the area including a few Grand Crus and told me to put it aside - lay it down. All the ingedients were now set for the discovery of 1990.

Upto that point I had consumed wine much as any twenty something lad about town would - namely how to maximise one's consumption as often as possible. But when I started to drink some of the Graves and Medocs and even St.Juliens my parents had proferred it was like entering a different realm. The Medoc reds I was drinking and buying were from very good years -1988 and 89 - still affordable in the early 90's - although of course I was drinking them way too young. But I had stumbled on a crucial lesson in drinking wine very early on - the importance of the year. Then came the 1990 vintage. Everything was good. You could'nt produce a bad bottle of red wine in the Bordeaux region that year unless you were actively trying to sabotage your own production. And of course the further up the scale you went...the Crus Bourgeios had the depth and complexity of the Crus Classes and the Crus Classes themselves.....well I managed to buy some Chateau Leoville Las Cases, St Julien ( i still have a couple of bottles stashed away) that were simply the best I've ever tasted. And once the trick was learn't I bought up every decent 1990 bottle that crossed my path and was just about affordable (from a single bottle of Leoville Barton discovered in a Noth East Co-Op to just about everything from the Medoc in 1990 that Majestic in Chalk Farm stocked).

Looking back (and alas all my 1990's have now been drunk) on a vintage that is now 17 years old (and some will argue only now starting to deliver up the full complexities of its top wines) I feel very fortunate. I got to know some of the greatest wines in the world at a time when I could still afford them and from a year some claim as the best in the 20th century. My taste changed for ever. I'm not saying you must drink a Paulliac or St Estephe from a good year with every meal (not unless you're a Russian gangster). But you know how good wine can be. In the right year, in the right place and in the right skilled hands.

And the other lesson gleaned from a decade's pursuit of a great vintage? That of the humble agricultural one - at one level wine is just a crop and as such subject to the complete vagaries and variables of the farming year. Yes, the mark of great viticuleurs is their ability to produce top quality wine despite dfficult conditions - to achieve a consistency over the years. But what matters as much is what the winemaker can never control - a heat wave all summer, no early frosts, no heavy rain during the 'vendage', enough rain at other times. In short a real vintage