Does the vintage really matter? It depends on the wine, and on the climate

There is a small four-digit number on almost every label that causes more anxiety than any tasting note. In restaurants people look at it with a knowing air, nod, and often have no clear idea why. The vintage is at once the most serious and the most overrated thing about wine: decisive for some bottles, almost irrelevant for a great many others. The trick is knowing which of the two categories you are in.

What that number tells you

The vintage indicates the year in which the grapes were harvested. Not the year of bottling, not the year of release. It therefore tells the story of a season: how much rain fell and when, whether there was frost in spring, whether August was a furnace or September brought cool nights. All of this ends up in the berry in the form of sugars, acidity, ripeness of the skins and tannins, and from there in the glass.

But a season leaves a strong mark only if the wine is made to show it. The more a wine comes from a single place, from a single variety, in an area where ripening the grapes cannot be taken for granted, the more the vintage can be felt. The more it is the result of blending, of vineyards spread across large areas, of stable climates and of a cellar that aims for consistency, the less that number counts.

Where it matters, and where it barely does

The regions where vintage makes the difference are those on the margins, where every year is a gamble. Burgundy, with its Pinot Noir that forgives neither cold nor excessive heat. Bordeaux, where debating vintages is almost a national sport. The Langhe, where Nebbiolo ripens late and a rainy autumn or a scorching summer changes the character of a Barolo. Then there are the cases in which vintage, by design, is almost absent. Non-vintage Champagne, the so-called non millésimé, exists precisely to erase it: wines from several harvests, kept in reserve, are blended to achieve the house style every year. Only in the best seasons do the houses produce a vintage wine. The same principle applies to Port, where a Vintage is “declared” only in years judged worthy of it. In both cases the vintage is not neutral information: it is already a verdict.

And then there is the vast territory of everyday wines: young whites to be drunk within the year, high-volume reds, wines from warm and reliable climates. Here the vintage serves above all one purpose, to tell you whether the bottle is fresh or has sat too long on the shelf. For a light white, the rule of thumb is that the more recent, the better. Chasing the “great vintage” of a wine designed to last twelve months is like asking a sandwich for its pedigree.

Heat is no longer the exception

For centuries, in wine-growing Europe, a good vintage was above all a hot one: the grapes ripened well, sugars rose, the wines were fuller. Cold, rainy seasons were the real enemy. That balance is now being overturned.

An exceptional historical series shows this clearly: the harvest dates at Beaune, in Burgundy, reconstructed from 1354 to 2018 by a team led by the historian Thomas Labbé and published in 2019 in the journal Climate of the Past. Until 1988 the harvest began, on average, towards the end of September; from 1988 onwards it has arrived about thirteen days earlier. The authors put it bluntly: hot, dry years, once exceptions, have become the rule.

The consequences for the very idea of vintage are subtle. If hot summers become normal, the difference between one year and the next does not disappear, but it changes in nature. The problem is no longer getting the grapes ripe, but stopping them ripening too fast: high sugars and therefore more alcohol, falling acidity, aromas sliding towards stewed fruit. “Cool” vintages, once considered lesser, are now often viewed with more interest by those seeking taut, long-lived wines. And extreme events weigh ever more heavily: hailstorms, late frosts after early budburst, prolonged droughts, rain concentrated into a few days. The vintage stops being a gentle curve and becomes a list of mishaps.

There is also a more hidden effect: vineyard management and the choice of harvest date are now used precisely to smooth out the vintage, which makes the number on the label a less reliable clue than it once was.

Taking stock of the 2025 harvest

2025 is a good example of how cautiously a vintage should be read, and with the right numbers alongside it. On 10 September 2025 Assoenologi, ISMEA and Unione Italiana Vini presented their estimates for the Italian harvest: about 47.4 million hectolitres, 8% more than in 2024, with quality described as good to excellent and the promise of fresh, long-lived wines in the North and structured reds in the South. According to the same estimates, the growth was driven by the South, with Puglia up 17%, while Tuscany recorded a drop of around 13% after an abundant 2024. Veneto remained the leading region by volume, with about a quarter of national production.

The season described in the estimates is also very much of our time: plentiful water reserves after the winter, a favourable spring, but heatwaves in June and at the end of August that put the South in particular to the test, saved in part by the water stored up in the preceding months.

International comparisons need handling with care, because the figures change depending on who compiles them and when. In September the estimates presented in Italy put France at 37.4 million hectolitres and Spain at 36.8. The first estimates from the OIV, the International Organisation of Vine and Wine, released on 12 November 2025, instead put Italy at 47.3 million, France at 35.9 and Spain at 29.4: a sharp downgrade for Spain compared with the September numbers. On one point the sources agree: Italy was confirmed as the world’s leading producer, in a year in which the OIV estimated global production at around 232 million hectolitres, 3% more than in 2024 but still about 7% below the average of the previous five years.

A note of caution: the quality judgements issued in September are forecasts made while the harvest was still under way, and they concern the grapes, not the wines. How memorable 2025 will really be is something the bottles will tell, and for reds built for long ageing that will take years. It should also be said that more wine is not automatically good news: the trade organisations themselves stressed that high volumes, in a market where consumption is falling, make it harder to pay a fair price all along the supply chain.

So, do they matter or not?

They do, but less than the myth suggests and more than those who dismiss them as snobbery will admit. For a Barolo, a Burgundy, a Bordeaux or a vintage Champagne, the vintage is real information, telling you something about how the wine will behave over time. For the white of the week, it is above all a soft expiry date.

The more interesting truth, however, lies elsewhere. In a warming climate, the vintage is becoming less a school report and more a diary: no longer “good” or “bad”, but hot, cool, troubled, early. To stop looking for the great vintage and start asking what kind of vintage it was is perhaps the most grown-up way of reading that small number on the label.

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