Do you know if your birth year was a particularly good vintage in Australia, or elsewhere in the world? Is there one (or a few) different wines made in that year that you just wish you had stashed away in your cellar?
Well, as expected, the Halliday Tasting Team have thoughts on this very topic – and have shared the wines they covet most from their respective birth years.
Toni Paterson MW
Birth year wines must be chosen carefully to stand the test of time. I was fortunate to celebrate my 50th birthday with a beautifully cellared 1973 Penfolds Grange, generously shared by a dear friend. It displayed incredible freshness and showcased Grange's hallmark density, concentration, and complexity, even from a less acclaimed vintage!
While Grange is always a safe bet, I wish I had tucked away some German wines, as 1973 was a good year for the Mosel, unlike in other classic wine regions. An exceptional Auslese from Egon Müller or an Eiswein from Weingut Max Ferd. Richter, with their high acidity and sweetness, would have aged magnificently.
Dave Brookes
There comes a moment, as the years stretch out, when you realise that life mimics the evolution of wine in a bottle, from the exuberant fruit of youth, the peak, the plateau, the gradual decay as the years roll on... then vinegar. I was born in a crap year for wine, but obviously a stellar vintage for humans. Most of the wines from my vintage are rubbish.
The Hunter Valley is my only saviour and I'm well served by the 1965 vintage in that fine region. Lindeman’s Bin 3100 and 3110, Tulloch Private Bin Pokolbin Dry Red, McWilliam’s Mount Pleasant Philip Hermitage et al, have been some of the greatest wines I have ever had the pleasure of drinking and each effortlessly stacks up on the world stage. So, I can't complain too much. A stellar Hunter Valley birth year that is still drinking beautifully. And, I share a birthday with Chuck Norris. I'm golden.
Jane Faulkner
I’d love to say 1978 is my birth year – what a cracking vintage from Barolo to Burgundy. Alas, the older I get, the happier I am to enjoy wines from all decades or great bottles on release, even if too young – Barolo 2016 is one of my favourite vintages. EVER.
I remember a journo asking David Bowie to think back to the ’80s, and he replied: “Do I have to?” I’m a bit like that with wine these days. Enjoy great ones before they become a curio. I never want to end up like that ahem! and I don’t need a cellar full of musty, moribund bottles either.
Shanteh Wale
My birth year isn’t exactly considered a great vintage, to say the least – even on a global scale.
If I had to choose the wines I most long to try, it would be either the 1985 Krug Clos du Mesnil or the Pereira d’Oliveira Frasqueira from the 1800s. I believe both would offer a transformative experience of time, no doubt leaving me utterly gobsmacked!
Philip Rich
There are not a lot of great wines from my birth year but there’s one wine that stands alone as not just the best wine I’ve tasted from 1963 but one of the greatest wines I’ve ever tasted, period.
A 100-point wine every time! Quinta do Noval Nacional Vintage Port 1963 comes from a 1.7-hectare plot of ungrafted vines and the last time I tasted it, ten years ago, this freakish wine was mind bogglingly youthful and concentrated without a trace of heaviness. A wine that has, at least, another 30 to 50 years of life left in it!
Mike Bennie
Anything I say about a birth year wine could come with a lot of pretension, apologies, but I was born in a top flight Burgundy year and have dipped into a few DRCs from that vintage. I could easily lean into the theoretical of that, but truth be told, if I could have a portal back to wine releases of 1978, I’d love access to '78s of Puffeney Vin Jaune or Wendouree Cabernet Sauvignon Malbec Shiraz, from which I suspect complexity, savouriness and latent energy will emerge.
I suspect the former would be still in stasis, with lunges of fino sherry and whip cracks of crystalline ginger and hazy apple juice alongside a cavalcade of nutty savouriness. The local wine a supple pool of Aussie bush character within the benign decay of forest berries and sweet earth with a fog of silty tannin lending the last elements of shape. What a joy that would be as a duo.
Katrina Butler
The growing conditions of the 1986 vintage were very good in most Australian wine regions in general terms, but we didn’t have the tech yet or, in many cases, the objective to make wines that spoke of their site and less to winemaking artifact. But Hunter Valley semillon – we got that right pretty early on.
I would love to track down a 1986 Mount Pleasant Lovedale Semillon. The seemingly endless longevity of these complex and pure wines is a true marvel and something to treasure for their freshness and evolution in the bottle.
Jeni Port
Well, my birth year was a bummer. No ifs or buts, everyone I have ever spoken to about my birth year commiserates. It was a stinker in Australia and Europe so, with that in mind, I would like to nominate another birth year, preferably younger, preferably from the '60s and 1961 to be precise.
Let’s go to Bordeaux and Château Palmer (a favourite) and a wine that the late Michael Broadbent gave 20/20, writing in 1978: “Silky, harmonious, accelerating like Michael Schumacher from the starting grid, full-bodied yet elegant, fleshy yet lissome. Perfection.” Yep, that will do.
Marcus Ellis
Well, if my parents weren’t drinking “rough red” around that time, then it would be good if they had the foresight to put aside some 1978 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti ‘La Tâche’. That would have been unlikely on their part, and it’s not honest on mine, as I would have been turning seven.
I can’t pick one, but Barolo from 1971 would be my go-to… Giacomo Conterno ‘Monfortino’, Rinaldi, Cappellano, Bartolo Mascarello (from the 1.9-litre bottles they used back then, so more wine and hopefully less oxygen ingress). Or German riesling… Egon Müller ‘Scharzhofberger’, Spätlese, Auslese, BA… not sure if they made a TBA in ’71, but if so…
