Vintage: The art of being wine-like
An etymological commentary on the use of the word vintage
i love the word vintage because it speaks to a favourite category of things i like to own. i grew up reading classic stories and watching old movies with phonebooths, and typewriters and record players. there’s just something so authentically rich and lovely about handling something old and analogue. i think thats why i’ve always preferred libraries over bookstores. the books in libraries have seen their fair share of dust, spiders and sweaty-palmed fingerprints. they’re not fresh off a printing table, they’ve seen their fair share of time.
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the word vintage comes from the latin word ‘vinum’, meaning wine. the word joins the verb ‘demo’ to make ‘vindemia’ which means ‘a gathering/yield of grapes’. it reaches the english language through old french ‘vendage’ (wine harvest), to anglo-french ‘vintage’, and finally into modern english.
connoisseurs of wine-making use the word a little more accurately than we do, when they talk about the date a wine was made. but i think, even in the process of broadening, we can still retain the rich use of the word in everyday speak.
when i think about vintage things these days, like my grandma’s old dresser, i think about how much it is like wine. and how wine, as it ages, becomes even finer. sure, the wood is getting old and the varnish is a little scratched up, but its nearly 40 years old and its craftsmanship still stands the test of time. i look at a lot of old things and i can feel the quality of craft in its history, and how in light of modern development, its authenticity makes it age even finer.
when vintage things get older, they get better. not because they become newer, but because even as they get older, they still remain as lovely and hearty as they were intended to be. and this makes them age with love, because they were created with it.
we miss a lot of that in modern society. not just in terms of tangible craft, but also our intellectual craft. when we write books to be best-sellers, and write songs to be billboard top 100 hits, when we’re in the race of making content for algorithms and for virality, instead of making art for humanity. we are slowly killing the process of art; and i fear that eventually, all our efforts to produce for the sake of producing, our art begins to age like milk, and not like wine. i don’t fear the death of vintage because nostalgia will always keep it alive. but i fear the death of real craft.
