The Wine List: Stories and Tasting Notes behind the World's Most Remarkable Bottles

By Grant Reynolds

A one-of-a-kind exploration of the relationship between culture, politics, history, and wine.

Vintage refers to the year grapes are harvested, and that vintage holds meaning. You can look up the weather in any almanac, but some stories are known only to insiders—until now. In this wine book Grant Reynolds, award-winning sommelier, deciphers these signatures to reveal the impact of marketing and mentorship, technology and trends, and influencers old and new. Beginning in the late eighteenth century with a tale about Thomas Jefferson’s secret White House stash and spanning over a quarter of a millennium to social media’s effect on chenin blanc’s popularity, The Wine List explores both the chemistry and sociology that have made vintages taste a certain way, fetch a certain price, or go extinct altogether. Featuring sidebars on topics like the taste of climate change, mini timelines capturing significant historical moments, and collage-style illustration, these entries solidify the idea that every bottle is a product of a particular moment in time.

A must-read for fans of wine books like Wine Folly or The World Atlas of Wine, The Wine List is a fresh new wine bible perfect for anyone looking for bar cart books or gifts for wine lovers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Union Square & Co.
• Release date: Nov 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781454947516

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Vintage is a word—almost always with positive associations—that can be used to describe everything from clothing and posters to watches and cars. In my world, it’s the year grapes are harvested—the foundation for every bottle of wine. The unique expression of a specific bottle of wine is defined by a few basic constants: the type of grape or grapes used, the place (country, region, vineyard) where those grapes were grown, and the producer or winemaker’s technical decisions in turning those grapes into wine. The most common differentiator of a vintage is the weather of that year, but the four numbers on a bottle can be about a lot more than that. The numerical signature can be a discreet mark of distinction, or, in select years, a more ostentatious declaration of quality and financial value.

Even before I was legally allowed to drink—in America, at least—I fell in love with wine. This was for two reasons: 1) I liked to party, and 2) I truly loved the stuff—the history, the taste, and everything that came along with it. I spent a year of high school in Italy, and I drank whatever was on the table. When I began to deeply care about what I was drinking, I was working at a restaurant called Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder, Colorado, with two of my early mentors, sommeliers Matthew Mather and Bobby Stuckey. These guys would drop names I’d never heard before (and definitely couldn’t pronounce), like Rayas, Gaja, and Dauvissat, with a joy deeper than most people speak of their loved ones. Their passion sparked my own. Working in a restaurant was tough, but the access to wines I never in my lifetime would have been able to afford made the long hours and high stress inconsequential. I was in the fortunate position of being able to consume wines older than I was. It’s said that the best wine palates of today belong to people who have worked on restaurant floors, and this is why.

At this time, circa 2008, good wine was still viewed as stuffy rather than cool, but I didn’t care. I was transfixed by the science, stories, sagas, and lore that made a certain wine taste a certain way or made it wildly expensive or even extinct. I learned everything I could from the few important books on the subject, exceptional mentors, an addiction to researching decades-old weather reports, and the early internet. I typed into Google: What was the weather like in Italy in 1988? My birth year. I had been told by several famous winemakers and master sommeliers that it was a good but not great vintage in Barolo. The best year of Sassicaia. A terrible one in Burgundy, with the exception of some whites. Magic for Roumier. A heroic time for Champagne, but only the ones made from 100 percent chardonnay. A vintage for spectacular examples of riesling. Reds of the Northern Rhône in the shadows of ’89 and ’90, but possibly better. Not a bad year for the pre-Parker style of California cabernet. But far from sating my curiosity, what I discovered only piqued my interest further. I found myself on a quest to find out why all those things were true about 1988—and how just those four digits could say so much.

I saved up my pennies to travel abroad, where I could drink more wine and work for free. I was taken in at places like Roscioli in Rome, where I first discovered the aging potential of obscure Italian grapes like fiano, aglianico, and frappato. I picked grapes at one of the most exceptional (and welcoming) wineries in the world, Domaine Dujac, where I learned that if restaurant work is grueling, picking grapes in Burgundy is the industry’s most severe corporal punishment. At Dujac, I tasted wines from the 1950s and ’60s for the first time. I didn’t yet have a concept of their value, which, in hindsight, enabled me to experience them in a humbler manner.

After I’d tried the best bottles of the classic French producers from Bordeaux to Burgundy and the Rhône at Dujac, I signed up to work, again for free, at René Redzepi’s Noma in Copenhagen. Natural wine was just beginning to make its way beyond the bars of Paris. At Noma, I tasted the good and the bad of this controversial category. The wine director at the time, Mads Kleppe, had (and has) exceptional access, taste, and a disciplined point of view on which wines should be served at what was then the best restaurant in the world. Mads championed underdogs that today have become collectibles. Wines from producers like Overnoy, Prévost, Sébastien Riffault, Métras, Pfifferling, Bernaudeau, and so many others were available by the glass on any given night.

Then, in 2012, I moved to New York City. Rajat Parr, a sommelier on the short list of people who have tasted the most valuable bottles in the world, encouraged me to go to get access to an abundance of old and rare wines. That prompt was reason enough for me. My usher into this exclusive world was Robert Bohr, a guy who, like Rajat, has consumed a ton of great wine. Robert sold me on the idea of opening a casual food spot with extraordinary wine instead of the more obvious career move of taking a sommelier position at a highly rated restaurant like Eleven Madison Park or Daniel. That restaurant, in the heart of the West Village, was Charlie Bird, and it went on to earn a number of accolades for its wine list. Together, and along with an amazing group, Robert and I would open two more restaurants celebrating that same ethos: really good food, even better wine—and you can wear sneakers if you want to. As the wine director of and a partner in some of the best wine destinations in the greatest city on Earth, I’d open bottles older than my parents, savoring the small sips afforded to sommeliers, knowing it might be the only time I’d ever smell that wine, let alone have a glass. I learned to be critical of trophy bottles that simply aren’t that exciting, and to celebrate the cheap, delicious ones that I’d take home and hoard for myself.

All of this is to say: I’m really lucky. As I get older, and as wines get older alongside me, we’ve all gotten a little bit softer, quieter with time. Some wines blossom into better versions of themselves, and some just hang on for dear life. But what determines a wine’s destiny? I find myself on the same quest I started at the beginning of my career: to understand how the combination of facts and events in the year a wine was conceived—its vintage—impacts not only how a wine tastes, but also how it lasts.

The Wine List is, well, my wine list: an accounting of what I believe to be the most remarkable vintages—a few spectacular, many excellent, and even a handful so bad they’ve earned mention in the annals of history. You’ll find in-world gossip, tales of the most famous vintages with accompanying insight into whether that fame is deserved or just hype, and overviews of the next generation of producers who will soon become legends in their own right. You’ll get a little history lesson, too. By asking producers many questions, visiting their cellars, in some cases even working their fields, reading the books, and drinking the wines (the best part), I have a distinct view of the wine world, past and present.

This book profiles notable vintages and then theorizes why and how these vintages became noteworthy. It also offers an introduction to the names and places that made those wines possible. It’s broken into four parts: the pre–World War II icons that broke ground for many; the triumphant bottles and people who, following the war, crafted many of today’s most respected wines; the first era impacted by both climate change and designing for the global market; and, finally, today’s age that caters to the most curious, diverse, and enthusiastic consumers in wine history so far. Along the way, we’ll pause to shine a light on some bigger ideas, like great labels and what biodynamic farming actually is. And so you don’t have to filter through old tabloids and weather reports to know what happened in, say, Eastern France in 1969, each entry—representing one vintage—points to some wonderful, significant, and even bizarre moments within that year, separate from the world of wine. With research by bestselling author and former New Yorker staffer Becky Cooper, you’ll see that while other forms of art are inextricable from the period of their creation, wine, in an even more literal way, is the product of a particular moment in time.

The Wine List answers the question of why we have come to classify certain vintages the way we do. And above all, it reminds us that just like the wine, all things change—for better and for worse.

PART I

THE FOUNDING BOTTLES (PREWAR)

The origins of wine have been recorded as early as 6000 BCE in places like Georgia, Iran, and Armenia. Back then, wine wasn’t bottled, and it certainly wasn’t collected. I’m also assuming there were no tasting notes, no wine dinners, and no connoisseurs. It was just alcohol made from grapes. Later, vine cuttings traveled the same way that spices, plants, and animals did when the world was colonized by the Greeks, Romans, Portuguese, and British. Fast-forward several thousand years and transform it into something that sits at the intersection of art and industry, and you’ll arrive at wine as we know it today: a glass bottle most often filled with 750 milliliters of fermented grape juice, labeled with some art and standardized legal requirements, and topped with a stopper.

The first hints of the commercialization of wine began around the sixteenth century, when wine regions adjacent to ports like Bordeaux and Madeira began to market their product. This is the point at which labels specific to wineries—and to a notion of quality—began to emerge. Inherent to the label was the idea that the name of a château, or a family’s house, could convey a specific indication of quality. Wine was a luxury even then.

In the Age of Enlightenment, science took hold, commerce went international, and the agricultural revolution dramatically increased the productivity of farms and fields. New glass technology meant wine could travel farther and stay fresh longer, and demand for libations that could last on monthslong transatlantic journeys shaped the global palate.

From the 1700s until World War II, the wine trade was dominated by Bordeaux and the sweet wines like port, Sauternes, and Madeira. Bottles were also produced in Italy, Spain, and California, but they were largely consumed locally until the turn of the eighteenth century. These lesser-known areas had only just started to emerge when the catastrophic phylloxera outbreak threatened to end the wine industry (see page 26). Alas, other bumps in the road lay ahead—World War I, the Great Depression, and Prohibition.

The stories that follow focus on controversy, tragedy, and destiny-shaping environmental events, and spotlight the wineries that triumphed despite these challenges to form the foundation of wine, and the wine industry, as we know it today.

AMERICA’S FIRST WINE SNOB

Unfortunately, no record exists detailing when exactly collecting wine became Wine Collecting. While some of Europe’s best-known wineries date back to the eleventh century, wine was only considered slightly more high society than beer—i.e., by no means something to be infatuated with, other than for its physical effects. The man to change that, in America at least, was none other than the Francophile Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson. During his tenure as ambassador to France from 1785 to 1789, America’s first wine collector and enthusiast shipped bottles back to the White House, where a concise collection, paid for by the people, still exists.

The man had great taste. Many of the wines he sent home are still considered the fundamental bottles of wine collecting—Bordeaux, port, and Sauternes, forever favored for their flavors’ glacial evolution. But Jefferson isn’t only associated with being the world’s first wine influencer; he’s also at the heart of the single most notorious bottle ever sold.

In 1985, at an auction in London, a bottle of 1787 Château Lafite went up for sale—a bottle with the initials TH.J etched into the glass. Legend has it that before shipping wines back home, Jefferson requested that his signature be adhered to the bottles, presumably as a way to keep less distinguished members of the cabinet away from the good stuff. This 1787 Château Lafite fetched £105,000 (about