Markus Keller, Ph.D., a professor of viticulture at Washington State University, considers it part of his job to “burst bubbles and destroy myths,” he says. “To be upfront, there’s no scientific evidence that there’s any change in fruiting or fruit or wine composition as a vine becomes older.”
However, winemakers and wine connoisseurs often describe wines from old vines as Karin Wärnelius-Miller does: “There’s a depth, beauty, and sophistication you simply don’t see from a younger vineyard,” she says. Karin and Justin Wärnelius-Miller are second-generation winegrowers and the owners of Garden Creek Ranch Vineyards and Winery, a 100-acre hillside estate in Sonoma’s Alexander Valley. Their oldest estate vines are Cabernet Sauvignon, planted in 1969. Justin Wärnelius-Miller occasionally considers replanting or redeveloping older blocks, “But then, you go back to the blending table and find that’s your key ingredient—how do you replace that?”
Vine age doesn’t equate to grape quality, yet many winemakers feel that old vines offer flavor profiles they find distinct and irreplaceable. Here, scientists and winemakers discuss these contrasting views.
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What Are “Old Vines?”
In 2024, the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV) adopted a formal definition of an old vine as a “single plant officially documented to be 35 years or older.” Otherwise, as Justin Wärnelius-Miller points out, the age at which a vine might be considered old has been subject to interpretation. “It often has to do with location, but I would say once you get past the 25- to 30-year mark, vines tend to be considered old,” he explains, adding that in some wine regions, vintners save the descriptor old for vines that are a century old.
For example, at San Leonardo in Trentino, Italy, the Guerreri Gonzaga family has produced Bordeaux-style wines for more than 300 years. Owner Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga observes gradual, incremental changes after year 25. “[This is when] vines have robust vascular systems, producing grapes of exceptional quality,” he says. “At 50 years, the vine achieves a remarkable equilibrium and ideal phenolic balance. Vines surviving beyond 100 years tend to produce fewer, larger grape bunches, reflecting their longevity and adaptation to the environment.”
The OIV’s new resolution also indicates that an old vineyard, in turn, must be composed of at least 85 percent of grapevines that meet the age criteria, buoying vineyard preservation efforts spearheaded by organizations like the Historic Vineyard Society (HVS) in California, the Old Vine Project in South Africa, and the Old Vine Conference, which runs the Old Vine Registry (a project begun in 2010 by Jancis Robinson, Tamlyn Currin, and others with an interest in safeguarding genetic and cultural viticultural history).
The HVS defines old vineyards as 50 years or older, with at least a third of the vines dating from their initial planting date, “to account for a couple of generations or more of people farming the vines,” says David Gates, the senior vice president of vineyard operations at Ridge Vineyards and an HVS board member. “This also takes into account the fact that you do lose vines over the years, as certain varieties are more susceptible to disease. Our start also corresponded with a big change in the way people were farming vineyards in California, moving away from head-trained, dry-farmed vines, as drip irrigation changed the way vineyards are planted. And, it’s also a working definition.”
Demystifying Old Vines
If we think of an older vine as we might an older human, there are helpful parallels. They’ve survived or avoided illness, proven resilient, and, as Guerrieri Gonzaga describes, adapted to thrive in their environment. For vines, vast root systems evolve to permeate layers of soil, tapping into moisture that can sustain them through dry growing seasons.
Part of the mythology of old vines is the presumption that, because old vines often yield less grape clusters, they create superior fruit from a smaller crop. According to the available research, this is where things become more complicated.
Old vines may produce lower yields “as a result of a gradual weakening of the vines, due to pathogens, viruses, or trunk-disease-causing fungi,” says Dr. Keller. He also cites research conducted by Dylan Grigg, Ph D., and colleagues that was published in 2017 and 2018. In his 2017 doctoral thesis, Dr. Grigg investigated the correlation of vine age and performance, examining the perception that “vineyards of greater vine age are often highly regarded due to the perceived quality of fruit and wine they produce.”
However, while the yield is often relatively lower in old vines, that’s not always the case. Keller synthesizes Grigg and colleagues’ research, which examined 150-year-old Shiraz vines in the Barossa Valley: “If the vineyard is well-maintained, irrigated, fertilized, and the canopy is managed, there is no difference with relatively newly planted vines in the same vineyard in terms of yield or fruit composition.” According to Grigg’s thesis, “Large differences in vine age did not produce differences in basic grape composition.”
Another study of Riesling conducted at Geisenheim University and published in 2019 examined vines planted at different times in the same vineyard over a period of more than 40 years, concluding they also all yielded similarly. Therefore, Keller suggests that stewards of old vines need not strive for smaller yields on purpose to achieve intense, concentrated flavors or tannins, because yield alone does not determine concentration. Provided that vines of varying ages all have “similar leaf areas and rooting depths,” says Keller, older vines will not necessarily lead to more concentrated flavors. He qualifies this conclusion to add, “In dry-farmed vineyards, young vines with less developed root systems are more likely to suffer from water stress, which can be good or bad for yield and fruit quality depending on the intensity and timing of the stress.”
Tempranillo vines dating from the 1960s at Dominio Fournier are planted on the banks of the Duero River within the Ribera del Duero DO, and grow in rocky soil with low water retention. “As the vines age, they balance the relationship between vegetation and production,” says winemaker and winery director Marian Santamaría. “They produce fewer kilos, but due to their adaptation to a harsh climate, the skins of the grapes thicken and the size of the grapes decreases. This is a quality factor for producing long-aged red wines with a great aging capacity.”
Keller points out that Chateau Montelena’s Judgment of Paris-winning 1973 Chardonnay was crafted with grapes sourced from three-year-old vines. Matthew Crafton, the current winemaker for Chateau Montelena, shares Keller’s point of view. “I think great vineyards produce great fruit, which makes great wine,” he says. “Consequently, those vineyards don’t get ripped out and are more likely to survive to old age. Fruit from the Bacigalupi vineyard [an original Judgment of Paris vineyard that’s still producing Chardonnay] is excellent, but there isn’t a defining old-vine characteristic I can put my finger on.” Crafton suspects the high quality is more due to the soil, weather, rootstock, and clone combination than vine age.
“My conclusion is, you can have an increase in quality over time if the berries get smaller [for example, due to water deficit prior to the berry ripening period], or you can have a decrease in quality if pathogens build up in the plant over time,” says Keller. “Or, it remains approximately constant over time.”
To vines’ capacity to self-regulate, “I have seen with my own eyes that with skilled farming—an essential component of the system—how much more resilient and drought-tolerant old vines are, and additionally how much more efficiently they allocate their resources in the form of the size of canopy and the crop level they set,” says Alex Krause, the co-founder of Birichino in Santa Cruz, where wine production centers on old, own-rooted vines that are farmed organically and without irrigation.
Both Stuart Spencer, the executive director of the Lodi Winegrape Commission, and Krause note that two additional considerations are currently being studied, and will perhaps later yield helpful information about vine longevity in the future. One is what Spencer refers to as epigenetics, or, describes Krause, “gradual mutation and adaptation to the site over time, which allows the vines to evolve in a particularly harmonious way with local conditions.” The other is the role of mycorrhizal networks, or, “interspecies subterranean mycelial networks in micronutrient exchange and plant defense mechanisms,” says Krause.
When Do Old Vines Create Exceptional Wines?
For Krause, when multiple generations find reason to invest in a vineyard, there’s “hope that the fruit and wine one can make from a given old vineyard stands a better chance than average of being exceptional.”
For winemakers, pragmatically, this means the ability to rely on what Rae Wilson, the owner and winemaker of Wine for the People in Fredericksburg, Texas, calls “historics.” When old vines are healthy, “There seems to be a point at which, over time, they offer consistent history, or consistent numbers in terms of phenolics, even with the variation between growing seasons,” she says. Wilson describes cool-climate grape varieties like Chenin Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chardonnay planted in Texas in the 1970s and 1980s as “achieving unique concentration and clarity” without long ripening periods where alcohol levels can increase due to sugar accumulation.
“I find that old vineyards’ flavors, sugars, and phenolics develop in sync,” says Krause. “That same balance is reflected on the palate, producing a wine that, with a lighter touch in the cellar that doesn’t overwork the fruit or use new oak intrusively, reflects that layered, dynamic quality.”
Wilson seeks out grapes from old vines not only for their consistent internal chemistry, but to evoke and express a personal winemaking style that’s typified by the deft touch Krause describes, with lower alcohol levels and “the freshness of the acid balance.” This began roughly a decade ago, after Wilson tasted Pheasant Ridge Winery’s Old Vine Chenin Blanc, grown in the Texas High Plains. “I thought, whoa—it has weight, depth, and all kinds of layers.” Now, she says, “I will jump through a lot of hoops to get the same or similar fruit, even a small amount of it. And because of the way it ripens, holding onto its acid, it’s perfect for sparkling wine.”
Similarly, says Guerrieri Gonzaga, as vines age and mature, “Their production becomes consistent, reflecting a stability that comes with age.”
Sandlands, Birichino, and Marchelle wineries use Cinsault from Lodi’s revered Bechthold Vineyard, planted in 1886; Paul Marsh, the visitor center manager and wine club director at the Lodi Winegrape Commission, attributes the enduring power of the Bechthold vines to “perfected vascular flow, and the fact that phylloxera is a non-issue in our sandy soils.” Krause describes “something very special in the violet and iris-root scented fragrance of our Bechthold Cinsault that I find in no other Cinsault—a depth of flavor that reminds me of what I love about great Cru Beaujolais from old vines planted in Morgon—a degree of complexity on a delicate frame.”
Old Vines, Sustainability, and Preservation
Wilson observes that, for winemakers, fruit from old vines “tends to be desirable no matter how low the production.” However, on the farming side, there are boons and costs. The longer vines remain in place, the greater return on the initial investment. However, maintaining an older vineyard means replacing dying vines, battling pathogens, and managing competition with younger vines.
Along with value, maintaining viticultural diversity and a region’s farming history “is extremely important,” says Kelly Mantel, the director of marketing at Harney Lane Vineyards in Lodi. “Once vineyards are gone, how do you tell the story of those farmers and that history?”
“There is value to us in hanging onto the little bit of tradition and history we have in California in the form of these old vines, and additionally value in preserving varietal diversity as we face an increasingly challenging climate,” says Krause, who works with old vine Besson Grenache (planted in 1910), Bechthold Cinsault (planted in 1886), and Little Big Block Carignane and Mourvèdre (planted in 1895). “All weathered remarkably well the three successive heat spikes we experienced in the 2024 harvest, holding onto their natural acidity with nary a raisin.”
Preserving old vines preserves a wealth of genetic diversity. “We are very cognizant of trying to have clean vineyards and we also respect historic vines that have come from different genetics—so we try to do both,” says Gates.
Santamaría recognizes that old vines can have deep-rooted sentimentality for winery owners and farmers. “One can find century-old vines that are maintained for emotional reasons: my grandfather planted them, I inherited them from my father,” she says. “They produce a high-quality product but are not usually economically profitable due to their low production. In our case, the winegrower decides at what point profitability can outweigh the sentimental issues and plans to renew them.”
The Wärnelius-Millers plan to nurture their vineyards for as long as possible, though. “You become more knowledgeable year after year, from doing the same thing on the same property—that consistency is invaluable,” says Karin Wärnelius-Miller. “We’re second-generation winegrowers and our daughter will be joining us after finishing college. There’s beauty to that—three generations producing an artisanal product from the same plant.”
Dispatch
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Amy Beth Wright is a creative nonfiction writer and journalist covering wine, food, and travel. She contributes to Wine Enthusiast, Fodors, and The Alcohol Professor, among other outlets. Keep in touch on Instagram @amyb1021 and Twitter @AmyBethWright. Visit amybethwrites.com to read more of her work.
