|  After 30 years of marking wines out of 10, he now finds it a "very dull process" because so many are alike. Johnson says that only snobbery is forcing up the price of some years against others.
He writes in the 2008 edition of his famous Pocket Book, "The truth is that vintages matter less than they did'; when we take a bottle off the shelf we don't need to worry, most of the time, about the year."
In a snipe at those who covet the year on the label rather than the taste of the wine in the bottle, he adds: "Apart from making one wonder what such people drink with dinner on a wet Monday, it points to a problematic concern with prestige that is driving the market at the top end.
"Those non-prestigious years and wines are better then they have ever been in the whole of their history; at the precise moment when vintages matter less than ever in terms of drinkability, they matter more than ever in terms of saleability."
UK based Johnson, doyen of wine critics and the world's best-selling writer on wine with total sales of £15m, said last week in Los Angeles: "Vintages used to be really crucial but the difference now is not so much in quality as reputation, because the most famous ones are traded up to ridiculous prices. The reasons people buy a particular wine are complex but have a lot to do with snobbism.
"If you sold a non-vintage Bordeaux nobody would buy it. It would be just as good, but it would not have the romance and the interest."
"Modern winemaking and viticulture have made almost all wines perfectly drinkable. Growers near the Mediterranean have learnt that if they plant their vines sideways on to the sea they are inviting a lot more humidity than edge on. They can take off extra leaves to let in more sun or allow more leaves to stay on so as to give shade in hot summers - such as the blistering heat of 2003 which produced "baked" red wines in France," says Johnson.
In the winery, wine is fermented in steel casks where the temperature is controlled by computer, instead of being allowed to fizz at high temperatures in oak barrels.
Vintage is still everything to the connoisseur if not to the consumer. Thirty 12-bottle cases of 1986 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild went for £4,600 a case in the sale. A case of 1990 vintage of the same First Growth can be purchased for less than half, at £2,100.
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk
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