While the world’s still wines remain mostly vintage, there is one type of wine where non-vintage blends actually dominate – sparkling wine.
This is led by France’s champagnes, where the vast majority of those produced have always been non-vintage.
Historically this was a necessity, as Champagne is the most northern wine region in France, and good summers were rare. So champagne-makers had little choice but to blend wines from different years to create a consistent, quality product.
Yet thanks to climate change bringing warmer summers to northern France, there is now more vintage champagne being produced than ever before.
Italian winery owner Riccardo Pasqua says it was enjoying the very best non-vintage champagnes that inspired him to make Italy’s first multi-year still white wine.
Located north of the city of Verona, in the winemaking region of Veneto, his family-run business Pasqua Vigneti e Cantine has been producing the non-vintage wine since 2019, blending it from as many as five different years.
He explains that the idea was to produce the best possible wine from a single vineyard, removing the reality of vintage weather variations, both good and bad.
“I proposed it to my family and my board, and they told me ‘you are crazy man, this is a big risk! You are going against the wine bible, the vintage is the vintage’,” he says.
“But I decided to stick to the plan, and we went forward. It is about getting the best expression of the vineyard. It is like a book, using more than one vintages gives the wine more chapters.”
Dining and Cooking