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Just seeing if anyone has anything to say.Rating vintages is mostly a load of crap. Especially in California. 97, 98, 99 - Do you seek out or avoid any of these years and if so why?
Follow Ups:
Rating vintage is merely a guide to general style or quality. There are always exceptions. Traditionally I have found there are less extremes in quality in California compared to French (or European) wine vintages, but this is due to the fact that getting good grape sugars in California is much easier than in Bordeaux or Burgundy.For the vintages you mentioned, 97 is excellent for cabernet in California, and quite consistent. 99 is a vintage I like for chardonnay, but individual regions can produce wide ranges of quality.
My favorite wines are French red burgundies, and the pinot noir grape is very susceptible to rot and to differences in the amount of sun or moisture/rain. Great vintages that I have tasted are 52, 53, 55, 59, 61, 64, 69, 71, 76, 78, 85, 90, 96 and 99. And I have had lousy wines from every single one of those vintages. But the relative quality and the consistency is what makes any one of those a fine vintage.
A wine from a great old vintage can be way over the hill, and a wine from a young vintage can be undeveloped, closed and harsh or thin. I have enjoyed many wines from lesser vintages that were perfect for drinking at the time the bottle was opened, and with the food we were eating. That's why a good sommelier can be trusted if he or she knows how a particular bottle is drinking now and how it matches up with the cuisine or dish of the restaurant.
Quality of vintages vary from place to place. Napa and Sonoma are small enough regions, that one can be pretty sure that a good or bad vintage can be generalized. However, even within a single valley, different microclimates (e.g., east-facing vs. west-facing slopes) can produce different qualities of grapes.If someone told me that Napa wines from a certain year were great or not so great, I might be inclined to believe him/her (if I respected the person's opinion).
But to generalize to a whole state (e.g., "all 1999 California cabs are bad"), I'd beg to differ! There are some outstanding 99s, but they are hard to find and can be a little pricey.
Why do you think that rating vintages is crap ? Do you believe that the harvest has little to do with the wine that emerges from it ?Lucifer
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