What does the vintage year on a bottle mean?

The share from that year

The law’s word for the year is vintage. The Wine Australia Act 2013 defines it, for wine and grape extract, as the year in which the grapes from which the wine was made were harvested. The Act also carries a rule that surprises most people who meet it: grapes harvested on or after 1 September in a calendar year, and before or on 31 December of that year, are taken to have been harvested in the next calendar year.

Grapes that are harvested on or after 1 September in a calendar year, and before or on 31 December of that calendar year, are taken to have been harvested in the next calendar year.

Wine Australia Act 2013 (Cth) s 4(2A), on the Federal Register of Legislation

Where a maker prints one year on the label, the Wine Australia Regulations 2018 set the share of the wine that has to come from it.

Despite subsection (1), wine may be described and presented as being of one vintage if at least 850ml/L of the wine is obtained from grapes harvested in that vintage.

Wine Australia Regulations 2018 (Cth) s 27(2), on the Federal Register of Legislation

The Regulations add one more rule for fortified wine: the grape spirit or brandy added to it is left out of that calculation, so a fortified wine is measured on the wine itself.

Read the share as a floor, not a target. On a 750 mL bottle, at least 637.5 mL has to be wine of the year printed, and up to 112.5 mL may be wine of other years. A bottle whose label names one year and holds a quarter of another year’s wine is out of step with the rule, whatever the label looks like.

More than one year

A label may carry a year that is not a vintage at all. Wine Australia gives the examples: the year the winery was established, the year a vineyard was planted, the year a winemaker joined. Its guidance on additional vintages says what a label must do so that the other year is not read as the vintage: give the other year a context, with words such as “planted in”, “established in” or “produced since”; state the actual vintage clearly; keep the actual vintage in the same field of vision as the other year; and make the actual vintage the more prominent of the two.

Worked through, that is a simple test on the front of a bottle. Take a label that reads “Established 1998” low in the corner and “2022” a centimetre away, set three times as large. The vintage is clear, the other year has its context, and a reader sees both at once. Now take the same label with “1998” moved to the back of the bottle, or printed larger than the vintage: the vintage claim is no longer the prominent one and the two years are no longer seen together, and the label no longer meets the rule Wine Australia set out for additional vintages.

The record behind the year

The year on a label is backed by paperwork the law requires. In the Label Integrity Program, Part VIA of the Wine Australia Act 2013, the people who must keep records include the person who grows the grapes, the manufacturer of wine goods, anyone who supplies or receives wine goods including a wholesale or retail seller or an exporter, and an agent who takes possession of wine goods for one of them. The Part applies to wine goods that originate in Australia. Section 39G narrows the duty. A person who grows grapes need not record, for the grapes grown, the date they were received, who they were received from, the quantity, or their vintage, variety and prescribed geographical indication. And a person who supplies or receives wine goods packaged for sale to a consumer, or an agent who takes possession of them for that person, and who has taken no step to change or affect any label claim before the sale, need not record the quantities received and supplied, the vintage, variety and prescribed geographical indication of the goods received and supplied, any steps that changed them, the date of supply, who the goods were supplied to, or other details the regulations prescribe. A person given a copy of a supply record must still keep that copy for seven years.

Among the details a record must show are the vintage, the variety and the prescribed geographical indication of the wine goods received, and of the wine goods supplied. A record is kept for a period that begins when the event recorded happens, or, where a record has to be made before it can be kept, at the end of three days after that day, and ends seven years later. Where a record keeper who must keep supply entries supplies the wine goods on, a copy of those entries travels with them: it must be given to the person receiving the goods on the day they are supplied.

For a blend of wines of different vintages, varieties or geographical indications, the record is finer still: it must show what proportion of the blend each wine represents, and the vintage, variety or prescribed geographical indication of each of them.

Wine Australia can ask for records by written notice, which must give the person at least 14 days to provide the information or produce the record. Its inspectors may enter wine premises to check that the label laws are being followed with the occupier’s consent, after producing an identity card. The guide on who checks a wine label takes the whole chain further.

Who checks that a wine label tells the truth

A label with no year

No law requires a year on a bottle of Australian wine. Vintage, variety and origin claims are not mandatory, as Wine Australia puts it, and a maker who leaves the year off is making no claim about the harvest. The same page of guidance records what a maker takes on by printing a year: an auditable trail of records, kept so that the origin of the wine can be traced back to the vineyard.

A wine with no year still has a label with rules. Most of the words it must carry come from the Food Standards Code, and the volume statement from trade measurement law. The guide on what a bottle must say walks the list word by word.

What every bottle of wine sold in Australia must say