There's an old saying; 'wine is made in the vineyard, not in the winery'. Like all truisms it contains more than a little wisdom. Any wine that you make can only be as good as the quality of the grapes that you put into it. With modern technology there's an awful lot that can be done in the winery that wasn't available to wine-makers of old. You can control the temperature, you can ferment anaerobically, you can measure every chemical that's present in your must and react accordingly - in short there isn't much that's outside the control of the wine-maker. But all that this technology can do is make the best of the raw ingredients. If they're not as they should be, no amount of high-tech can produce a good wine.

The choices available to the grower are also many. Beginning in January and February when the vines are pruned you have to begin making choices. Vines can be trained into bushes, onto trellises, or even into arcades that you can drive under. Each of these pruning and training techniques are devised for particular methods of harvesting. Trellises are the time-honoured way of training vines. It maximises the exposure of the bunches of grapes to the sun and at the end of the season these ripened bunches are picked by hand. The arcade system was devised to make picking easier and therefore cheaper. A tractor and trailer can be driven underneath the vines and the bunches are pulled off directly into the trailer. The trade-off is that bunches of grapes are partly shaded by their own greenery. Training the vines into low bushes is for mechanical harvesting. The wheels of the harvester pass on either side of the bushes and the bunches are mechanically picked. With this system the trade-off is that everything is picked - over-ripe and under-ripe bunches, although some proponents claim that less grit and soil are harvested this way.

The other major option that a grower has is determining what vine variety he will plant. Different vine types produce different wine qualities. But even with that decision made there are still choices to be had. Most vineyards contain vines of differing ages. This is because some replacement has occurred over the years due to disease or natural wastage. Under normal circumstances all the bunches from all the vines in a vineyard are harvested and vinified together, but there has been a trend recently to select particular vines for particular wines based on the age of the vine itself. Old vines produce less must, but a more intense flavour as their roots tend to go much deeper and process the lower mineral layers of the soil.

If you want to try this effect and money isn't a problem, the Rosemount Estate from Australia make a wine called 'Balmoral', which is made from very old vines. It's a spectacular wine, but doesn't come cheap - around £30 a bottle. If that's not in your price range, increasingly old vine wines can be found at different price ranges.

Wine of the Week.

Marques de Aragon. Old vine Garnacha 1999.

A wine from the Spanish region of Catalyud made from the Garnacha grape, a variant of the Rhone Grenache. Ruby red in colour and very dry, it has full flavour and would be a good accompaniment to red meats.