Ever wondering what vintage (year wine was made) to pick when you are at the store?

I know that when I started to drink wine, I would head over to Trader Joe’s and stare at the shelves in utter uncertaintly. One of the first things I did was start reading magazines on wine, some are easier to read, some are harder but in the end, the more you read, the more you learn.

One great find was a Vintage chart, you might be wondering what a Vintage chart is. A Vintage chart is basically a way to tell which year was a good year in a certain area and be able to select your wine. Once you know the country from which you would like to select your wine, then you look up the region, then the year. Based off this, you can make an educated decision on a probably good wine.

According to Dr. Vinny of Wine Spectator “Wine Spectator‘s editors review individual wines in blind tastings, but they also summarize the overall quality and characteristics of specific regions in specific years, hence the vintage charts. ”

So this takes away some of the guess work, now you just need to pick from the numerous brands there are out there. At least you have an idea of the right year, region and country, the rest is up to you.

Recently, one of my favorite sites for finding out about wine has posted a free app. So for all my tech happy friends, you will be happy to know Wine Spectator has posted a very easy to use and quick app to figure it out: http://apps.winespectator.com/vintagechart.php

In case you aren’t a techie and perhaps like a paper version, you can also download it and print it from this link: http://assets.winespectator.com/wso/pdf/022912VintCard2.pdf