Often times the traditional reviewer (Galloni & Raynolds do a great job) will list the base wine vintage in the review. That said, I would certainly appreciate it as a consumer to have it on the bottle as well.

That being said, what keeps a producer from not accurately keeping this?

Jose Dhondt for me please!

The facts are that wine shops are no place to age wine. The consumer needs to know how long it’s been on that shelf. Period.

The consumer demands truth in labeling (i.e. when was this product made/disgorged/ingredient list/etc.). Most consumers could care less about wine journalists and their points.

Why is alcohol somehow different than any other beverage?

Mark

I would respectfully suggest you chose your retailer before choosing any wine let alone a champagne. And if we put accurate disgorgement dates as is demanded by many journalists why am I getting so much reticence reviewing each disgorgement? The answer is that it does not fit neatly in to publishing imperatives making part of the debate a publishing one. In other words we are required to do our job whilst large portions of the industry just gets a pass because that is the way it is and there is nothing to do about it?

Let me just address an obvious one: besides retailers who pull bottles of wine direct from the cellar for the customer at the time of purchase, I have yet to see ANY wine retailer with acceptable display conditions to allow a wine to sit on the shelf for more than 6 months-1 year.

A wine that has been “bottle-aged” on the retail shelf is sitting upright, blasted with fluorescent light for most of the day, and is exposed to temps generally 15-20 degrees+ above cellar temp. BTW, how many retailers run their heat/AC when the store is closed? How is this a a good thing? A new form of rapid-aging?

It’s very convenient NOT to list a date on the bottle – imagine how much more milk could be sold if they didn’t list Sell By dates?

@flowfilms