A causa di the world of wine, the vintage has always been a central element: it indicates the harvest and represents the climatic memory of a territory. However, increasingly extreme weather conditions are leading a growing number of producers to experiment with non-vintage still wines, obtained from the blending of multiple vintages. Once associated with di cattivo gusto and low-quality productions sopra the collective imagination, today they are starting to be reevaluated as a response to the growing unpredictability of the climate.
Climate change is reflected sopra the bottle
A causa di Napa Valley, California, winemaker Chris Howell has worked at Cain Vineyard and Winery since 1991. A causa di recent decades it has seen hotter summers, heat waves of up to 50°C and increasingly frequent forest fires, such as the devastating ones sopra 2017 which struck at the height of the harvest the one a few days . the occasion of the 2017 tragedy, part of the production was saved and used for a non-vintage blend called Cain Cuvée, which combines wines from different vintages to maintain a coherent style even sopra difficult vintages. This year we’ll see what Howell does because the fire devastated a good part of Californian production but we believe he can implement the same tactic.
Howell underlines to the BBC how climatic variability makes the use of these blends more likely, while recognizing that a cultural caratteristica remains strong, especially among those who associate the value of a wine exclusively with the single vintage.
The capriccio of non-vintage wine is not new: French champagnes are the best-known example. Historically, Champagne, the northernmost wine region of France, necessarily had to combine wines from different vintages to ensure quality and continuity. Today, paradoxically, climate change is bringing more favorable summers, increasing the production of vintage champagnes.
A causa di Italy, Riccardo Pasqua has chosen to introduce the first multi-year still wine from the Peninsula. Since 2019, his family business sopra the Veronese complesso has been producing Hey French, You Could Have Made This But You Didn’t, a blend of five different vintages. The declared objective is to maximize the potential of a single vineyard, regardless of climatic fluctuations.
Pasqua says that initially the proposal was received with skepticism: “Going against the tradition of the vintage was seen as a risk”, but the increasingly extreme weather conditions – late frosts, violent hailstorms, drought – have made the multi-year approach an increasingly shared strategy also by other Italian wineries.
According to the Master of Wine Dawn Davies, consumers are divided into three groups: those who buy wines without paying attention to the vintage, those who have in-depth knowledge and recognize the advantages of multi-year blends, and finally those who remain rigidly tied to the vintage tradition. For Davies, the majority of wines are however the result of a blend, not of a single barrel, therefore the extension of the practice to the different vintages appears a logical consequence.
