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The true age of wine

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.

Reply to
R1ch
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The year the grapes were harvested. Some wines also list the year of bottling (Penfolds Grange is one that springs to mind).

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 is - see above.

Martin

Reply to
Martin G Bridges

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.)

Reply to
Steve Slatcher

The same exception applies to icewines from the EU.

M.

Reply to
Michael Pronay

grape

something

The year it was harvested.

different

so

(by 6

Yes, exactly.

can be

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

Reply to
Ken Blake

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

Reply to
Dana Myers

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

Reply to
Anders Tørneskog

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