Wine Vintage Chart: Every Region Rated by Maturity
Updated
A wine vintage chart carries two readings, not one, and the second is the one that decides whether you open the bottle tonight.
A wine vintage chart rates one growing season in one region and attaches a drink instruction to it. Wine Spectator scores the season out of 100, then applies one of five words. Drink means "most of the wines can be enjoyed now and will see little or no improvement if stored". Hold means "most of the ageworthy wines have yet to fully mature; they should improve over time if stored properly". Drink or Hold, Past Peak and NYR cover the rest. Berry Bros & Rudd uses a different scale, "1 (very poor) to 10 (outstanding)", with four maturity terms rather than five. The Consejo Regulador of DOCa Rioja publishes no number at all, only an official grade: excellent, very good, good, normal or medium. The score and the drink word move independently. On Wine Spectator's Left Bank Bordeaux chart, 2005 scores 98 and reads Drink or hold, while 2010 scores 99 and reads Hold.
What is a wine vintage chart?
It is a regional average with an instruction attached. Wine Spectator rates new vintages for "more than 50 regions and varieties around the world" each year, and says in the same breath that the charts are "by necessity, general in nature".
Three different kinds of authority publish them, and they are not doing the same job.
A magazine panel tastes. Wine Spectator builds each rating from the weather during the growing season, vintners' reports on the crop, and blind tastings of hundreds of wines from the region. Its editors then look at how many classic and outstanding scores appear and where the average sits. "There are no formulas that generate these vintage ratings," the magazine says.
A merchant estimates for its own customers. Berry Bros & Rudd says its maturity model brings together "the insights from our data team, over 40 years of experience of our Wine Director and Master of Wine, and the regional expertise of our team of Buyers".
A regulator certifies. The Consejo Regulador of DOCa Rioja awards each harvest an official grade. The Consejo lists 2019 as excellent, 2021 very good, 2024 good and 2025 excellent.
Two conventions are worth knowing before you read a number. A score written as a range rather than a single figure is provisional: Wine Spectator states on its 2026 wallet card that "a score range indicates preliminary analysis based on barrel samples and/or a limited sampling". And NYR means most of the wines of the vintage are yet to be released, so it is a note about availability, not quality.
How do you read the score and the drink code?
Read them as two separate columns, because that is what they are.
| Score | Wine Spectator's label |
|---|---|
| 95 to 100 | Classic |
| 90 to 94 | Outstanding |
| 85 to 89 | Very good |
| 80 to 84 | Good |
| 75 to 79 | Mediocre |
| 50 to 74 | Not recommended |
| Code | What Wine Spectator publishes |
|---|---|
| Drink | "Most of the wines can be enjoyed now and will see little or no improvement if stored" |
| Hold | "Most of the ageworthy wines have yet to fully mature; they should improve over time if stored properly" |
| Drink or Hold | "The wines can be enjoyed now, though may benefit from more time in the bottle if you enjoy the characteristics of older wines" |
| Past Peak | "Most of the wines are declining" |
| NYR | "Most of the wines from the vintage have not yet been released" |
Berry Bros & Rudd splits the same territory four ways, and its wording is about texture rather than timing. Not ready: "Reds may have high tannins and lack the complexity that time in bottle will provide." Ready, youthful: "Youthful wines are dominated by fresh fruit aromas." Ready, at best: "Tannins may have softened on red wines, giving a silkier texture." Ready, mature: "These wines need to be withdrawn and enjoyed at the earliest opportunity. They are no longer developing complexity."
Neither the score nor the age of the bottle sets the code. Wine Spectator shows Drink or hold for 1990 at 97 points on its Champagne chart, thirty-six years on, while its Left Bank Bordeaux chart marks 2003 Past peak at 89 points after twenty-three. A high score buys a wine nothing. Only the drink column is about time.
Why do two vintage charts disagree about the same year?
Because they are answering different questions, and neither publishes a formula you can audit.
Bordeaux 2021 is the clean case. Wine Spectator's Left Bank chart gives it 84 points and says Drink. Jeff Leve's Wine Cellar Insider chart gives the same year 90 points and says Hold. Six points apart, and opposite instructions to the same buyer.
The gap is designed in. Leve states that his rankings are "not awarded for a mathematical average of scores" but on "a rough average based on your chance of randomly purchasing a bottle of Bordeaux wine from the vintage of your choice and having it offer a reasonably good, wine tasting experience". That is a question about the median bottle. Wine Spectator's editors weigh how often high scores appear alongside the average, which is a question about the top of the distribution. In a year where a handful of estates did well and most did not, the two methods have to diverge.
The disagreement runs across the whole quality range, not just the weak years. On 2022 Bordeaux, Wine Spectator's Left Bank line reads 95 and Drink or hold. Leve reads 99, Hold, and calls it "clearly one of the greatest vintages of all time".
Regulators and magazines part company too. Across the Rioja years both charts cover, the Consejo Regulador's only Excellent is 2019. Wine Spectator lists Rioja 2019 at 92 on its 2026 card and puts 2021 five points ahead at 97, a year the Consejo rates very good. Two published charts, one region, different best year.
Why the Bordeaux wine vintage chart is two charts, not one
Because Bordeaux is two growing regions on either side of an estuary, and any chart that gives the year one line has already averaged them together. Wine Spectator splits them, and the split is where the useful information sits.
The table below sets Wine Spectator's Left Bank chart against its Right Bank chart, same publisher, same day.
| Vintage | Left Bank (Medoc, Pessac-Leognan) | Right Bank (Pomerol, St-Emilion) |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 95, Drink or hold | 97, Hold |
| 2016 | 97, Hold | 94, Drink or hold |
| 2015 | 94, Drink or hold | 97, Hold |
| 2011 | 91, Drink or hold | 91, Drink |
| 1998 | 88, Drink | 95, Drink or hold |
| 1996 | 91, Drink | 87, Past peak |
Look at 1996 and 1998 together. In 1996 the Left Bank is four points ahead and still drinking, while the Right Bank is past peak. Two years later the order reverses and the Right Bank is seven points ahead. A merchant list that says "Bordeaux 1998, 88 points" is quoting the wrong bank for anything from Pomerol.
The same logic runs one level further down, from bank to commune to estate. No chart can tell you which chateau picked before the rain. Our Bordeaux vintage pages hold the estate-level detail behind each year.
Why the same chart says hold for Bordeaux and never for Burgundy
Because the drink code is calibrated to a region's drinking convention, not to a bottle. It is not a unit you can carry between chart lines.
Wine Spectator lists twenty-nine vintages on its Cotes de Nuits chart, 2023 back to 1995. Not one of them says Hold. Not one says Past peak. Every year reads either Drink or Drink or hold. Over the same span its Left Bank Bordeaux chart says Hold for 2010, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2020, and Past peak for 2003 and 2013.
That is one publisher, one house style, two vocabularies. Red Burgundy is drunk younger and the chart follows the habit, which is why Hold on a Bordeaux line and Drink or hold on a Burgundy line are not comparable readings. Our Burgundy vintage pages set the Cote de Nuits and Cote de Beaune years on one scale.
Two categories break the pattern the other way, because the wine exists only when someone declares it.
Champagne. A house declares a vintage in the years it chooses to, and under the appellation rules the wine then matures at least three years. A house making both styles may use no more than 80% of a vintage harvest for its vintage Champagne, so at least a fifth of every year is held back for the non-vintage blend. The chart shows the consequence. Wine Spectator skips 2001 on its Champagne chart entirely, and scores 2011 at 79, inside the band it labels Mediocre. A declared year is not automatically a good one. The Champagne vintage pages carry the declaration record house by house.
Vintage Port. A shipper decides a year is worth declaring, sends samples to the IVDP for approval, and bottles two to three years after the harvest. Not every year is declared, and in intermediate years a house may declare a single quinta instead of its flagship blend. Every Vintage Port year on Wine Spectator's 2026 card, 2019 through 2023, reads Hold.
Do vintage charts work?
Partly, and the sharpest evidence against them is a blind test rather than an opinion.
Roman Weil, a University of Chicago professor and co-chairman of the Oenonomy Society of the US, ran that test and published it in 2001. He poured wines from years the charts rated Excellent and Appalling, four to seventeen years past vintage, three glasses at a time with one wine different, for 240 wine drinkers. Weil found that they "cannot distinguish between wines of good and bad vintages, except for Bordeaux, and even when they can distinguish, their preferences and the chart's do not match better than a random process would imply".
Then he answered the obvious objection. He ran one pairing again with a group who had been drinking great wine together monthly for more than fifteen years: four of twelve picked the odd glass, which is what chance predicts. Seven French wine academics at a conference all spotted the difference, then split four to three on which vintage they preferred.
Two wine writers had already made the same point in plainer language. Frank J. Prial of the New York Times wrote that the winemakers of the world have rendered the vintage chart obsolete. Bill Marsano wrote that "winemakers now have the technology and skills to make good and even very good wines in undistinguished years", though he added that those wines "won't be long lived".
Weil does not tell you to throw the chart away. The use that survives his test is the arbitrage one. If the marketplace believes in vintage charts, Weil writes, "carrying one will help you find the good buys in wine. Buy wines from the Appalling years." A chart that cannot reliably rank quality still moves price, and those two facts point in opposite directions.
Which is why the fine wine market index and the chart belong on the same screen, and why off vintages worth buying is a real category rather than a consolation prize.
Why the chart's year is not your bottle's year
Because a chart rates a harvest and you own a bottle, and three things sit between the two.
The label is not a guarantee of the year. Under US rules, a wine carrying a viticultural area appellation needs "at least 95 percent" of the wine from grapes harvested in the labelled calendar year. For an appellation of origin that is not a viticultural area, a state or a county, the figure drops to "at least 85 percent". A vintage-dated bottle can legally hold a slice of another year.
The chart is an average and your producer is not. Wine Spectator says it tastes hundreds of wines before rating a vintage, and dozens for small subregions. The estate that picked ahead of the rain and the one that did not both sit inside that single number.
Storage rewrites the drink window. The Australian Wine Research Institute states the working limits plainly: "any storage place where the temperature exceeds 25°C for long periods and 40°C for short periods can affect wine quality", and above 40°C the changes appear "in only a matter of days". Wine held at 30°C developed "faulty flavours and decreasing overall quality after 12 months' storage". Every Hold on every chart assumes a cellar, and a bottle that spent a summer in a warm flat has aged years its label does not show.
Berry Bros & Rudd is honest about how wide the estimate is. It says on its own maturity page that "most drinking windows have 20-odd years of variance", and that "a wine is ready to drink whenever you want to drink it". Twenty years of variance is not a window. The drinking window guide explains how a narrower one gets built, and when to drink what you own applies it bottle by bottle.
Which regional vintage chart do you need?
Start with the region, then the sub-region, then the year. A chart line is worth reading only at the finest grain its publisher offers, and most offer more grain than the wallet card shows: Wine Spectator alone splits France into thirteen separate charts, four of them for Bordeaux and four for Burgundy.
- Bordeaux, split by bank: the Bordeaux vintage chart
- Burgundy, split red and white: the Burgundy vintage chart
- Champagne, by declared year: the Champagne vintage guide
- Rioja, where the regulator and the critics part company: the Rioja vintage chart
- Port, by declaration rather than by harvest: the Vintage Port chart
Read every region on one maturity scale
A vintage chart is hard to use because no two publishers mean the same thing by the same word, and none of them means anything about your bottle. Our vintage maturity charts fix the first half of that: every region sits on one scale, so Hold in Pauillac and Hold in Nuits-Saint-Georges are the same reading rather than two house styles.
Compare any two regions, or any two years inside one region, and you get the same three things in the same places: where the year sits in its drink window now, how wide that window is, and how far the estates inside the year disagree with each other. That is the comparison a published chart cannot give you, because each one is a single line standing in for an entire harvest.