Decoding the Vintage Chart in an Age of Climate Chaos

Every year, Wine Enthusiast releases a new edition of its vintage chart, a tool that’s long been critical to collectors. Vintage charts help pinpoint bottles peaking in quality—and those that may be past their prime. The most recent version debuted in the Winter Issue of Wine Enthusiast Magazine. 

But in a time when climate chaos—unprecedented periods of drought, heat waves, floods, fire and more—is rampant, how should one read a vintage chart? And can we still trust them?

In this episode of the Wine Enthusiast Podcast, we’ve tapped Writer-at-Large Christina Pickard for her thoughts. Pickard reviews wines from Australia, New Zealand, England and New York for our publication and has for years been one of the many voices helping craft our vintage chart.

“There is no region in the wine world that is untouched by climate chaos,” Pickard tells us. But that doesn’t necessarily mean vintage charts are irrelevant. “I’d say that the vintage chart is a really good quick shortcut into, ‘Let me just see, was this a good vintage? Is this something I should buy straightaway, or maybe not?'”

That said, context is more important than ever. “Maybe don’t remortgage the house based on one thing that we said,” she warns. Still, the vintage chart reveals that great bottles are being made every year, all over the world. Even more compelling, vintages previously thought to have been duds are proving to be quite the opposite.

Tune in to hear Pickard’s takeaways from this year’s vintage chart, both about her regions and the wine world beyond.

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• Why blind tasting is the only way to rate wine without bias.
• Looking for a game night activity? Try hosting a blind-tasting party.
• How to prevent palate blowout during wine tastings.
• When tasting wine, don’t let water be an afterthought.

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Episode Transcript

Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting.

Speakers: Rachel Tepper Paley, Christina Pickard

Rachel Tepper Paley 0:00

Hi, I’m Rachel Tepper Paley, digital managing editor at Wine Enthusiast Magazine. Today, we’re talking with Wine Enthusiast writer at large, Christina Pickard, who reviews wines from Australia, New Zealand, England and New York for our publication, Christina has for years, been one of the many voices helping us craft our vintage chart, the most recent edition of which appears in the winter issue of Wine Enthusiast magazine, vintage charts have long been a helpful tool to collectors, helping direct them to bottles that are peaking in quality and pinpoint those that may be past their prime. But a closer look reveals deeper stories about wines around the world and hints as to what may be on the horizon. In this episode, Christina helps us decode takeaways from the vintage chart, both from her regions and beyond. Hey, Christina, thanks so much for being with me today.

Christina Pickard 1:44

It’s a pleasure to be here. So I hear you are reporting live from Central taco, New Zealand. I am. I’m not even going to tell you how breathtaking my view from my accommodation is what I’m staring at right now, because it will just make you too jealous. I I’m already jealous. It’s too late.

Rachel Tepper Paley 2:05

So Christina, you contributed to the winter issue of Wine Enthusiast. What in one way, be in the vintage chart, which is what we’re here talking about today. I’d love you to talk a little bit about what surprised you about the regions you tasted this year that you see reflected in the vintage chart?

Christina Pickard 2:25

Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been with Wine Enthusiast now for almost eight years as a writer, as large and reviewer, which is kind of making me feel a bit like an old lady in some context. So I’ve been able to contribute to the vintage chart for quite a few years now, and so it’s been giving me, I think has given me a little bit of a perspective. I remember in the early years feeling really intimidated, sort of, you know, taking that mantle from my predecessor and going, Oh God, this is now, you know, sort of my interpretation of the chart, without being unfaithful to his interpretation. But it’s so it’s been interesting to be able to look at sort of, now, seven or eight years of my, you know, my own scores and my own thoughts on from vintage to vintage, and seeing the way that the regions that I cover have have changed or not changed. But really, every everywhere in the wine world is certainly being affected by climate primarily, which is really, really makes a big difference to, of course, the wines in our glass every year. But you know, there’s always wines and vintages that, upon first tasting, look one way, and then with time, either improve or fall apart somewhat. So when we’re entering our score and our age predictions, you know whether we advise to hold it or drink it, or it’s in decline or whatever for the most recent vintage. So in this case, for this winter issue, it’s 2023, that’s really us reviewers predicting, to the best of our abilities, and based on what we’ve tasted and learned about the growing season, the future of a certain region. But as the years go on, you know, we look back at certain vintages, we get opportunities to taste in the region with producers at or at large regional tastings, and a certain vintage, like the 2021 vintage, for example, in South Australia, might look even better than predicted a few years before. Or you know, if we’re going to go back further, the 2011 vintage, which was widely derided in Australia as being wet and cold most in most of Australia, some of those wines are actually looking fabulous now. So that cooler vintage provided acid and taught tannins, and particularly acidity is what really holds together a wine for many years. You know, the same has been said by my fellow reviewer and writer at large, Matt Kettmann, about the 2011 vintage in his region in the central coast of California. Like these are wines that, you know, we all thought, Oh God, this is like the worst vintage, you know, in decades. And actually, you know, you look at them and they’re elegant and they’re still fresh today, and sometimes more than some of those so called perfect growing seasons, which can sometimes fall apart because maybe the fruit is too ripe or too flabby to withstand the test of time. So you know, to some extent, it’s similar to on premure and Bordeaux. This vintage chart, it’s an exercise in crystal ball gazing, and it shouldn’t. It shouldn’t be mistaken for anything other than predictions. That would be my two cents.

Rachel Tepper Paley 5:09

Has there been a precedent for, you? Know, you say that some these vintages that you maybe had previously not thought were going to be great, but then turned out great. Like, have you? Have you seen that often in your career is that the norm?

Christina Pickard 5:23

I don’t know. It’s hard to say anything’s the norm in the wine world. It’s hard to it’s hard to generalize too hugely. But what I would say is often, and it definitely depends on your palette. But if you are somebody who’s a bit of an acid hound, like I am, likes acidity, likes that elegant and freshness, then I would say those cooler vintages that often are, you know, maybe particularly in the past. Unfortunately, we’re having less and less cooler vintages with climate change. But those cooler vintages that in the beginning can just look really hard, you know, really hard acidity, really, really tight tannins, and they’re hard to even put in your mouth when you’re young, often, can really be beautiful with time. So I would say, if you are a collector and you do have some of those cooler vintages of the past, you know, don’t write them off. They may end up being the ones that look the best for you in 1020, 30 years time.

Rachel Tepper Paley 6:13

I love that. I’m gonna quote you to you now in the winter issue, in talking about takeaways from the vintage chart. You’re talking about South Australia, you note that some of superb vintages were, “unicorns in the era of quote, climate chaos.” Do you see examples of climate chaos in other regions you review, and how do you think that will affect vintages in these regions going forward?

Christina Pickard 6:39

Oh my gosh, Rachel, there. There is no region in the wine world that is that is untouched by climate chaos. I mean, there’s no region in the world that is untouched by climate chaos. And I think I use that word chaos really deliberately, because that is what it feels like. This is not global warming in the sense that we thought it was in the 90s. And really, this is what scientists have been saying since the 90s, it’s not going to just be this, this linear, you know, this upward line of the climate getting warmer, it’s going to be chaos. And that is exactly what we’re seeing. You know, I mean, in Australia, we’re not just seeing these extreme heat waves. We are. They’re in one right now. It was, you know, 120 degrees in the Riverland, and they’re picking grapes right now we’re also, they also came out of, you know, two years of floods and rains and that they the same river land. This is this inland, very, very dry. One of the hottest, driest regions in Australia was a year and a half two years ago flooding. The Murray River was flooding. So we’re seeing both, and it’s happening everywhere. And the Finger Lakes and in my New York regions that I cover, you know, in 2023 they had a frost in the spring. They very rarely have springtime frosts, and it was right at bud break. They’d had this like crazy hot weather in May, 80 degree weather the week before, so all the buds had burst, and then they saw a frost the next week that wiped out huge amounts of their crops. And they don’t have that frost protection in place, because it’s not typical. I mean, now they’re starting to invest in it, but that, you know, so we’re seeing that we’re seeing in New Zealand, Cyclone Gabriel in 2023 wiped out hawks Bay and Gisborne in the North Island, and at the same time down in the south, they’re having some some of their driest conditions this year in 2025 so it’s everywhere. It’s, you know, it’s France, it’s Italy, Rioja. Rio has, just has, like, crazy heat. I mean, just crazy heat. Lately, there’s really no part of the wine world that is been untouched by by climate change.

Rachel Tepper Paley 8:37

How do you think this will play out in vintage charts of the future, or is it just impossible to predict?

Christina Pickard 8:43

I think it’s gonna make our job a lot harder. Even amidst this climate chaos, there are still some really excellent wines coming out. Part of that is because we are getting smarter, not we, as in me, but the wine industry is getting smarter in the way that it farms. It has better technology than it’s ever had before, so it’s able to still produce pretty delicious wines, often in a tricky year. And also, what we’re seeing is, like some of that frost that I mentioned with bud burst that might wipe out a lot of fruit, but it doesn’t mean that the fruit that’s still on the vines isn’t delicious. It could just mean what? And like, that’s what I’ve seen in New Zealand being here too, is that 2024 for example, was an excellent vintage, but it was just low, low yielding in Marlborough particularly, there just wasn’t a whole lot of it, but it was, it’s a great vintage. So it’s what makes it harder for us to generalize. You know, there’s, it’s becoming harder to say this is clear cut, a bad vintage or a good vintage, because it’s, it’s always, it seems to be more and more in that gray area.

Rachel Tepper Paley 8:43

Right? I mean, the question that follows in my mind is, is the benches chart still a useful tool?

Christina Pickard 8:54

I mean, I think it is absolutely a useful tool. I would just say, take it with a grain of salt and in the right context. You know, I think that it’s, it’s still a generalization from one reviewer, but you know, that’s part of the benefit of Wine Enthusiast, having this team of writers at large who are out on the ground in the beats that we cover, and seeing this stuff firsthand, I would say it’s good to compare and contrast with other vintage charts as well. Maybe I shouldn’t say that, but if you’re a serious collector, you know, look at what several of us are saying across the board, I definitely still think it’s helpful, just maybe don’t like remortgage the house. I’m the one thing that we’ve said. I think what’s worth exploring is, like, look at what we’ve said about the vintage. I’ll check the vintage chart, and then I know that we’re starting as of this year to have some more comment of our own comments that below it to sort of flesh out a little further what we mean when we say we gave this vintage a 96 or whatever. And then you can also check the wineries websites as well. They always have really useful information. So I’d say that the vintage chart is a really good just quick shortcut into, you know, let me just see, was this a good vintage? Is this something I should buy straight away, or like, oh, maybe not. You can also look across at, you know, the last decade or 15 years. And see, you know, for example, Margaret River in Western Australia, that, you know, Western Australia is on the chart. Those are pretty much, we’re talking about cabs and Chardonnays. If you look at my scores for and my predecessor scores for, like, almost the last 20 years, it’s been above 90, like you can, you can sort of get an idea. Okay, this is actually a pretty safe region to collect from and to buy from, because it’s really consistent. I mean, that is actually one region that it is certainly touched by climate chaos, but maybe not quite as in the extreme that some of the South Australian and Victorian and New South Wales regions are like they tend to be for now anyway, in this bubble where I would say, if I just wanted to buy and know that, like pretty much every vintage I buy for the next 20 years probably is going to be good and it’s not going to fall apart. Like, that’s one way of interpreting the chart as well.

Rachel Tepper Paley 11:48

Yeah, I think that to your point, like, especially with those sort of additional comments that have been added to the Wine Enthusiast vintage chart, context is key. And I think that especially in the era of climate chaos, you know, we need more information even, you know, I think that the vintage chart to your point, it’s like a good overview. But, you know, adding context is key to understanding that overview. If that makes any sense, absolutely.

Christina Pickard 12:14

Yeah, absolutely. And I also think it’s a way, you know, I mean, I don’t want to go down too much of a tangent with with the climate and farming. But, you know, I’ve been here in New Zealand now for the last few weeks, and I attended their Pinot Noir conference, and it was very, very centered on environment and on farming and all the amazing new farming to, you know, we now have, like, subterranean irrigation, which can cool the cool the soils by 30 degrees, like, there’s all this wildlife that is coming in, yeah, and it’s really exciting. And, I mean, we had these climate experts. I listened to them speak at the conference, and they there was such urgency in the way that they spoke. You know, these numbers are really scary, and everybody knows, like we need to be acting now, you know, if you’re not already acting, which you should be. But then it was very stark, I have to say to then fly to Marlboro, and you fly into Marlboro, and as far as the eye can see is vines, and it’s a monoculture, and there is a lot of very, very badly farmed vines, and this is in an area that is people know, as you know, I think museum people think of New Zealand, it’s so clean and green, but you know this, and there are so many people in Marlborough, let me just say as a disclaimer, that are absolutely doing the right thing, and that are farming well, but there is a lot of big corporate brands who are farming very badly there, and are, you know, these compacted soils with a lot of herbicide, and they’re selling, and this is a lot of this is going to sell to the United States, like $12 sauvignon. So there is also an urgency in buying and collecting or just drinking wines that are made well and farmed well. And I think one other nice way, if you’re paying attention to the vintage chart, I would hope you’re also paying attention to the way that people are farming and producing, and you’re you’re buying up. I know, I know it’s not very inclusive in this moment in time to say we should all be spending more on wine. I know that stuff. But on the other hand, I think thinking of it the way that you might think of the way you eat meat. For example, if you’re a meat eater, in trying to eat less meat and trying to go local as much as you can, or go with people who are farming ethically, you know, cheat meat, we know is also, you know, had huge, huge negative environmental impact. I think thinking of the same way, with wine, this is still an agricultural product, and we now know, particularly with all we’re learning with regenerative farming, that monocultures are not good, and so buy from places that are from producers who are doing the right thing, and often in regions, maybe where there’s not a lot of huge corporate influence. You know, I love Marlboro, and I don’t want to try to ride that as that’s just because I happen to have been there. The same could be said in places like Bordeaux and in Burgundy, where you have in parts of California, just these huge monocultures. When you see it firsthand, it’s pretty shocking to see this dead land. Basically, they’re farming it for 20 years, killing the soil, ripping up the vines and finding somewhere else. So then clear and plant. And this is all going into cheap, cheap wines. And again, there are many people doing the right thing, but there, and this is mostly coming from big corporates who are selling cheap. So I just say, support your farms. Buy up. If you’re looking at the vintage shark, you’re probably already doing that. But you know, buy from, buy, from people who are doing the right thing. And it’s also our job as the media to tell those stories, like people shape culture, and culture shapes policy, you know, and that, and that’s we need that so all of us to be telling, telling a story of of better farming, and because it’s we’re seeing it out here firsthand, what’s happening with the climate and what’s happening with bad farming, and we just the urgency is there. It’s got to change.

Rachel Tepper Paley 15:45

Yeah, no. 100% what can the changes that you’ve seen in your review regions? And to remind folks, that’s Australia, New Zealand, England, New York. Have I missed anything?

Christina Pickard 15:56

Nope, those four. Okay,

Rachel Tepper Paley 15:59

what do those changes in your mind. Tell us about where the wine industry is headed in general.

Christina Pickard 16:06

Well, I guess in sort of just leading on from what I was saying about climate and farming, you know, I think in general, we are going to, we are already seeing regions that were once thought too cool to be able to make wine, making wine very well. And I’d say England is probably the best example of that. I lived in England for a long time, and when I left in 2012 there was a burgeoning sparkling industry, but a whole lot of it could strip the enamel off your teeth with that old acid it was. It was pretty under right because it was really on the edge of where rightness was possible. And now what are we 13 years later? It is very much possible, and I saw Pinot Noir. It’s still Pinot Noir at 14% alcohol there recently. You know, there is massive plantings now happening in regions like the crouch Valley and Essex, which is a warmer region of still Pinot and Chardonnay. So we’re even, you know, sparkling is having its moment, but I predict in the next decade, we’re going to see a lot more table wines out of these regions that we once thought were too cool. There’s plantings in Scotland. There’s plantings in Scandinavia. Now they’re ripening vinifera vines in Scandinavia, which is just crazy. So I would say going cool everywhere is just going cooler, right? We’re going whether it’s elevation, or more towards the coast, or just a completely different country, wherever we’re, wherever it is. I think that these hotter regions are going to continue to struggle. I think they’re doing, you know, they’re doing what they can, but we’re that’s the move with my regions, is we’re seeing these cooler regions and New York state as well. We’re seeing just more, you know, more ability to ripen Cabernet Franc and Blau Frankish in a way that maybe we it was a lot greener a decade ago, and a lot of that greenness is just not there anymore, because the general temperatures are trending upwards.

Rachel Tepper Paley 17:53

Do you think that the changes that you’re seeing in your regions? I think I know the answer to this, but I’m going to pose it to you anyway. Do you think that they are indicative of changes that are happening in other regions. You mentioned Bordeaux and burgundy earlier. Do you think that there are some through lines?

Christina Pickard 18:09

Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, those obviously aren’t places that I am super focused on, but I have certainly been to those regions in the past, and then from what I hear about when I was there, and from when what I hear now, you know, it’s getting it’s getting warm. I think Roger Voss, my colleague who covers Bordeaux, said that 2020 24 The weather was the enemy. You know, there was frost and hail, rain, mildew, and we’re just seeing that more and more. Aleks Zecevic, who is my my colleague who covers Germany and Austria, you know, she was talking about 2014 and the vintage chart saying it might be the villain of the last decade in Europe. You know that it was cold and wet and just downright miserable. But then you look at like 2022 and Bordeaux is the hottest, driest vintage in recent memory. There was hail storms, there was red wines being picked in September, which is really early. You know, if you look at Bordeaux vintage charts of relate, it’s a litany of heat waves and droughts and devastating frost events in Rioja, 2023 was marked by a long heat wave. In 2022 they had the hottest year on record. I mean, this is, this is what you’re seeing everywhere. And like I say, there are, there are a lot of innovations being made to mitigate climate change. You know, Bordeaux already has allowed other varieties in the region, which would have thought been thought unheard of 15, 10-15, years ago. And now they have other varieties to how to be able to continue to make the wines that everybody knows is Bordeaux style wines, because it’s just starting to get too warm to consistently ripen Bordeaux varieties. So, yeah, I think that we’re, you know, I don’t know. I don’t know whether changing over grape varieties is it’s one solution, but it’s certainly not. It doesn’t feel as super sustainable to me, because it takes a long time to re and it’s not environmentally sustainable to rip up all your vines and plant something new that’s going to take four years to come in. And I don’t know, you know, I don’t think there’s any one answer. You know, there’s, there’s a lot of innovation going on everywhere. But the thing that I just keep going back to is you need to farm Well, you know, stop, stop with this monoculture. Stop dumping herbicides into the ground and killing the soil. You know, there’s just a lot of, there’s still a lot of poor farming. There’s still a lot of organic farms being switched back to conventional because it’s cheaper to I won’t name one of the big corporates that I saw here in Marlborough, but I saw it that, you know, with my own eyes. And you know that are that are buying up organic vineyards, and because it’s cheaper and easier to switch to conventional, they’re doing that because it’s economically. They’re trying to make cheap, you know, 12, $14 mulberr Sauvignon Blanc, that they’re gonna crop really high. And to crop high, you need a lot of water. You need to basically flog the vineyards for a couple decades until they die, and then you rip it up and you plant somewhere else that isn’t, that can’t happen anymore. And that urgency, like we need to start telling those, I think sometimes US media folks go a little too easy on that, and I think we need to start, I think we’re doing a good job at telling the stories of the people who are doing great work, and there’s so many people who are doing great work. But I think we also maybe need to start holding the feet to the flames of some of these bigger, particularly these bigger corporates who are not doing great work and getting away with it. Yeah.

Rachel Tepper Paley 21:19

Do you have any predictions about your regions in the future, which you know might be reflected in future vintage charts?

Christina Pickard 21:27

Oh, um, I think that from being here and seeing so we’re in the southern hemisphere now, in New Zealand, of course. And so they’re just starting harvest for the 2025 vintage, which I think always blows the mind a little bit of northern hemisphere people. But so they can. I already have predictions for the 2025, here and what, and having spoken to people here, which is that it’s shaping up to be a very good vintage, if not very hot it’s been, I would say the, I would say the through line for a lot of regions these days is it’s hot and dry. Australia certainly has been very hot and dry. So these the picking is sort of Fast and Furious New Zealand. It’s a little bit, you know, it’s not quite as warm a climate, obviously. So they don’t have quite the heat, the heat waves that Australia gets, but they are still seeing a lot of, they could use a lot more rain. They’re still seeing a lot of, a lot of dry, warm weather for these regions. So I would say that for the vintage chart, you’re going to see more, more of us predicting maybe wines that are lovely and ripe and supple and drinkable now, but that may fall apart a little bit quicker than some of the predecessors when you do get like that unicorn vintage I talked about in 2021, in the Barasa and South Australia. You know, those are going to to me, those are going to feel more like exceptions to the rules. I think that. I think that would be my my crystal ball gazing would be more warm. Vintages will equal more sort of drink now wines. So to really pay attention more to those, when you do get those really nice, cool, even ripening years, because they’re going to be fewer and far between. Wow.

Rachel Tepper Paley 23:05

The thing that I keep saying in my head is the vintage chart a tale of climate chaos. Yes, there’s the tagline, we did it.

Christina Pickard 23:15

Keeping it positive. It’s hard. You know, there are many positive things happening in the wine where, like, we see it. It’s what keeps us going and inspires us every day to keep to keep doing working in this industry. It’s an amazing industry, and in many cases, because wine is essentially a luxury item. We are a luxury item with 3000 years of history, or whatever. You know, we are in a privileged space that we this agriculture, viticulture is has more resources than a lot of other agriculture. So in many ways, I think that canary in the coal mine analogy with wine is a really good, good one. In part because grapes are so sensitive. Grapevines are really sensitive to changes in climate. But in part because we have, we as an industry, have the luxury and the privilege to be able to farm well, and certainly often the resources and the money to be able to do it well. And so, so when we do it well, we do it, you know, like those who are, are some of the most innovative and progressive members of the in the agriculture space than any, than anywhere. And so for that, we should be really proud as an industry, but I also think we still have a lot of work to do. I hear that

Rachel Tepper Paley 24:25

Well, I think that’s a great note to end on. Christina, thank you so much for being with us today. This is really great.

Christina Pickard 24:30

Pleasure. Rachel, thanks for having me.

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