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18-02-2021
Column: Wine Chat - IT’S VINTAGE TIME!
Column: Wine Chat - IT’S VINTAGE TIME!
How many times have you heard the term ‘vintage’ and wondered, as you looked at your purchased bottle, what the term actually means? Put simply, it’s the year that the grapes were picked (harvested) in the vineyard. A vintage wine is one whereby the grapes were all, or primarily all, grown and harvested in a single specified year.
But to a winemaker, vintage is so much more. It’s the realisation of a year’s work in the vineyard and a record of the conditions and events of that year. It’s the opportunity to utilise their skills and passion to create something special, and its success is also directly related to their livelihood. That’s a lot of pressure on one event!
Grapes normally ripen at the end of summer through to early autumn. In the Northern Hemisphere, vintage occurs between the months of August to October, and in the Southern Hemisphere between the months of February to April.
When to harvest the grape is paramount and can shift within those said months from one year to the next, depending on what st

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