Vintage...

The best thing about wine is the wine. Listen, I’m no wine buff, but I know what I like and that’s basically a nice Merlot or Cabernet and you can forget the vintage as long as it tastes good and lifts the clouds.

It was while I was drinking a nice recreational bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon 2011 last night that I got to thinking about vintage; the word that is, not the wine. Wine’s like that for me. It focuses my mind on the strangest things and I have to rush for a pen and write them down before the wine makes me forget.

Vintage.

Now I work (as I laughingly call it) in a place where everything is vintage ‘this’ and shabby chic ‘that’, retro or up-cycled. My working world is awash with pink and cream and duck egg blue and apparently everything vintage is ‘GORGEOUS!’ (or so the ladies declare) even those horribly tacky cheruby things, even those pieces of horrendously kitsch faux Louis XIV painted furniture. Of course to my eyes it all looks a tad too chintzy, a pose, tacky even; the kind of stuff a stuck-up maiden aunt might like, all too Parisian: Maurice Chevalier – Eiffel Tower – Dubonnet.

Vintage has become one of those words that get’s bandied about far too often; so often that it’s almost lost its meaning. Vintage is about the year a wine was made, purely and simply, and the clue is in the word: ‘Vin’ meaning ‘Wine’ and ‘Age’ meaning ‘Age’. I have no idea what the ‘T’ is for.

Vintage isn’t meant to be used to describe anything in a distressed and shabby state. It’s about wine! Ebay is full of ‘vintage’ this and ‘vintage’ that, but as a word it’s only really helpful if it’s misused alongside the decade that the item was made. ‘Vintage Sixties’ at least gives you a ballpark idea of the era that whatever piece of tat you fancy belonged in. The word vintage alone tells you nothing, it’s meaningless.

It’s generally accepted that an antique has to be 100 years old and older. Anything younger than 100 years could be vintage if you insist on misusing the word. That makes 20’s and 30’s vintage, and 40’s, 50’s, even 60’s probably. But I struggle to see how anything from the 70s or 80s is vintage in any way.

Of course there are some things described as vintage that have a defined time slot associated to them. A vintage car is generally a car built between 1919 and the end of 1930. Anything before that is a veteran (unless it’s 100 years old and an antique), and anything before vintage a classic; although there seems to be little agreement on exactly what the term ‘classic’ means. Cars between 30 and 49 years old are generally accepted as classic by many, but I’m sure second-hand car salesmen everywhere would disagree – particularly when they have 1992 Mondeo to shift.

Perhaps as the pace of change speeds up even faster, and things become redundant more quickly, things will become ‘vintage’ after only a handful of years. It certainty seems to be happening in the geeky world of gaming with redundant consoles and computer games changing hands for silly prices. Maybe an eighties Care Bear or Cabbage Patch Doll really is vintage to a five year old child; perhaps it’s even an antique. Maybe it’s all about perception.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for hanging on to things, up-cycling to make things look more attractive, recycling to give them new life and purpose. But I can’t stand the meaningless vintage sales label.

Rant over; I really do have too much time on my hands. I think I’ll stick with the wine; pour me another glass. Cheerio!