vintage

Pluralvintages

Formsvintages, vintaging, vintaged

1. 1
   adjective

   Classic, or old enough to look plainly outdated but not old enough to be antique, such as old watches, 1980s or 1990s video games, or old magazines.

   The repair shop specializes in vintage computers, mostly beige desktops from the early 1990s.

   He tracked down a vintage cassette player so he could listen to his old mixtapes again.

   Similarclassic, old, retro

   Oppositemodern, new

   Note

   Here the word nearly always stands before its noun: a vintage watch, a vintage console, vintage magazines. It also takes degrees, so one jacket can look more vintage than another. Unlike the fixed 1870–1980 span, it names no dates. What counts is how outdated a thing now looks, so the boundary keeps moving forward. It shares its logic with the year a thing was made: an object is vintage because its date shows.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   Wine, especially of high quality, identified by the year it was made and the vineyard or district it comes from.

   He opened a rare old vintage to celebrate their anniversary.

   Collectors bid thousands of dollars on the finest vintages at the auction.

3. 3
   adjectivebefore a noun

   Of high quality and lasting appeal.

   The champion put on a vintage performance to win in straight sets.

   The album is vintage soul, as fresh today as the week it came out.

   Similarclassic

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The year in which something was made, or the place where it was produced.

   The farmhouse still has wiring of uncertain vintage.

   Most of the office laptops are of 2015 vintage and painfully slow.

   Similarage, date

5. 5
   nouncountable

   The grapes or wine produced by a vineyard or district in a single season.

   This year's vintage was small because of the late spring frost.

   Growers in the valley expect a record vintage after the long, dry summer.

   Similarharvest, crop

6. 6
   adjectivebefore a noun

   Relating to a vintage, or describing wine identified by the particular year in which it was made.

   They put away a bottle of vintage port for the baby's eighteenth birthday.

   The vintage chart rates each year's wines from poor to outstanding.

7. 7
   adjectivebefore a noun

   Of a car, built between 1919 and, usually, 1930, or in the US sometimes between 1919 and 1925.

   Only vintage cars built before 1931 may enter the hill climb.

   His pride and joy is a vintage roadster built in 1926.

   Note

   With cars the word trades its loose everyday meaning, old enough to look dated but not yet antique, for a fixed span of years. The edges are firm: a car from the 1950s is not a vintage car, whatever its age suggests, because the label names a period of building rather than a look.

8. 8
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The harvesting of a grape crop and the first pressing of its juice for making wine.

   Students from the village help with the vintage every September.

   During the vintage, the presses run late into the night.

   Similarharvest

   Note

   Latin built the word for exactly this work: vindēmia, a gathering of grapes, joins vīnum, wine, to dēmō, to take away, so the grapes are taken from the vine. It came into English through French as Middle English vendage, and the crop the gathering brings in, a season's grapes or wine, shares the name.

9. 9
   verbtransitive

   To harvest grapes from the vines.

   The growers will vintage the hillside grapes next week.

   Volunteers vintaged the grapes from the oldest vines by hand.

   Similarharvest, pick

10. 10
    verbtransitive

    To make wine out of grapes.

    The monks have vintaged their own wine here for centuries.

    Small producers vintage only a few hundred cases of red each year.

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