screw this up. But those only come every five to seven years. That’s how you tell the difference between a great winemaker and a merely competent one: by the wine he makes in less-than-great years.

Being attuned to Nature affects a wine’s longevity, too. Grapes that are mature when harvested (and not just ripe) offer a remarkable balance between drinkability and ageability. My job is to extract this balance during fermentation and aging. During fermentation it’s possible to under-extract or over-extract tannins while the grape’s skins and seeds are in contact with the juice. What percentage of whole berries go into the fermenter, the temperature, the number and intensity of pump-overs, how hard the skins are pressed, how much press wine is added back to the free-run juice — these all effect the final degree of extraction. During aging there are still more choices: the kind of oak, the percentage of new versus neutral oak, how often the barrels are topped, how much air is added to the topping wine, how often the wines are racked, how much sediment is left in the barrels, blending and so on. I could go on but suffice it to say that each vintage offers a different balance between the drinkability and age-ability. In great vintages, it’s almost impossible to