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Viticulture

How a season becomes a vintage

Which weather events matter, when they matter, and why "a hot year" is not the same as "a good year".

The short answer

Vintage variation is the accumulated result of weather meeting the vine at specific stages. Frost at budburst, rain at flowering, drought through ripening and rain at harvest each do something different, and the same weather in a different week has a different consequence.

Overview

Vintage charts compress all of this into a single number per region, which is useful shorthand and loses almost everything that matters.

A season difficult for one variety can be excellent for another in the same region, and a producer’s decisions can matter more than the weather.

Why it matters in the glass

It explains why vintage matters far more in marginal climates than in reliably warm ones, and why the same year is rated differently for reds and whites in the same region.

Step by step

  1. 1 Winter

    Chilling requirement met or not; extreme cold can kill buds or, rarely, vines. Rainfall recharges the soil water the season will draw on.

  2. 2 Budburst

    Spring frost is the acute risk. A single night can remove most of a crop, and late-budding varieties and mid-slope sites are the defences.

  3. 3 Flowering

    Cold, wet or windy weather causes coulure and millerandage, permanently fixing a smaller crop. Nothing later recovers it.

  4. 4 Summer

    Warmth and sunshine drive ripening; drought, heatwaves and hail are the risks. Humidity drives mildew pressure.

  5. 5 Véraison to harvest

    The critical period for flavour and phenolic development. Warm days and cool nights are the usual ideal.

  6. 6 Harvest

    Rain close to picking dilutes fruit and causes splitting and rot; a dry, settled autumn allows picking on judgement rather than under pressure.

What people get wrong

1 widely repeated claim this page corrects.

Oversimplified

“Hot regions make high-alcohol wine because heat puts more sugar in the grapes.”

Warmth accelerates sugar accumulation, so the potential is there. What actually reaches the bottle depends on when the producer picks, and picking date is a decision, not a climate.

Where the story and the evidence part company

WineHQ does not publish critic vintage scores and does not equate warmth with quality. It records what the weather did and what that mechanically implies, and leaves the judgement to the reader.

Sources

Sources consulted

More in the vineyard

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Climate and wine style

The largest single influence on what a wine tastes like — larger than grape, producer or winemaking, and the reason the same variety is unrecognisable in two places.

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Climate change and wine

Warming is already reshaping where wine is grown and what it tastes like.

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Harvest and picking decisions

When to pick — the single most consequential decision a producer makes each year.