In the 70s, wines without vintage were the worst of the worst. Now there are CVC bottles above 700 euros

Harvesting, parenting, reserve, great reserve and, well, CVC. That is, the acronym of “set of several crops”; A denomination that, at least since 1974, usually designates The worst of the worst of Spanish wine. Or that thought most of the regulators, of the industry and, above all, of the consumers.

And so? Because? European standards allow to introduce up to 15% of wine from previous crops to “improve” the wine of the vintage in question. In essence, except in systems such as young and soleras, wine is largely bottled luck. Each vintage is the result of a particular concatenation of human, climatic and geological phenomena: each bottle is the sum of a very long conversation between the world and the human being.

Therefore, the usual practice told us that it was a bad signal that a vintage needs more than 15%. There was too much to fix.

But they were prejudices. In 2017, Marcos Eguren He took the market A CVC to 750 the bottle. People were scandalized, but did it for pure prejudices. It is not only that the Sierra Cantabria has not stopped growing in price, but that some of the most important (and expensive) wines of the country were already CVC: the best example is The Special Reservethe top of the highest range of Vega Sicily.

In a social context in which the “duplicate wines” They begin to appear strongly And in which climate change puts against the ropes to the warehouses of the main wine regions, it makes no sense to produce with one hand tied behind the back: the same wine mixing technique that serves to mask bad vintages can be used to generate exceptional wines. Rudy Kurniawan is The best example.

Why were we going to give up it?

And the answer is complicated. Above all, because there are a lot of ways of drinking wine. For a good part of consumers, this does not try broths with exceptional organoleptic properties (which also); This is taking sip to sip The history of a small portion of land on the planet. With their dramas, their water stress and the magic of fermentation.

Even in wines such as those of the Jerez framework where a very high homogeneity and a higher quality, the differences between centuries of centuries is something wonderful is achieved.

The issue is that for another much of the consumers, a glass of wine is not had to carry a oenological, climate and agronomic trip by the Rioja, the Burgundy or Bordeaux. These want a glass of wine to be a glass of wine, because they were not going to aspire to the best wine they can get for a certain price?

A revolution that affects everything. It is a general trend: everyone seems to divide into boutiques that do something small, personal and high quality and franchises that produce simple, homogeneous and highly standardized products. Pass with hamburgers, Pass the gyms… How wasn’t it going to happen to the wine?

The doubt now is how this wine revolution impacts without vintage in a sector that climate change and international competition is hitting very hard.

Image | Klara Kulinova | Kevin Kelly

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