Most wine bought by Americans is consumed within a day or two after it leaves the store. We pick up a white or red for dinner, maybe something special for friends or the boss. Perhaps we show brand loyalty, choosing a reliable label time after time.

Vintage doesn’t matter for those day-to-day purchases. But once you get hooked – once wine exerts its grip on your palate, your imagination and your wallet – you start paying attention to the weather in Bordeaux, Burgundy or Napa. You remember which years brought frost or hail to the Medoc, rain in the Cote de Beaune and a heat wave singeing grapes throughout Tuscany. When temperatures plummet in January, you worry less about your water pipes than about vineyards along the Blue Ridge.

When you collect wine, vintage is paramount. Weather during the growing season affects the quality and price of the wine. You begin gaming the vintages, buying strategically in lean years and doubling down on the “vintages of the century.”

“In cold years, such as 2008, 2006 and 2004, the wines are shy. They don’t want to show themselves right away,” says Aymeric de Gironde, director general of Cos d’Estournel, a major producer in the Saint-Estèphe appellation of the Medoc, in Bordeaux. He was in Washington recently for a dinner at Ripple in D.C. for Bordeaux fiends featuring 15 vintages of Cos, paired with five courses prepared by Marjorie Meek-Bradley, Ripple’s executive chef and a current contestant on Bravo network’s “Top Chef.” The dinner was organized by Panos Kakaviatos, an Arlington, Va., native who writes about wine for Decanter magazine and blogs at Wine-Chronicles.com.

“In a cooler vintage, you have an expression of soil and vineyard that is more faithful to the wine’s origin,” de Gironde said. In warmer years, such as 2003 or the highly touted 2009 and 2010 vintages, the wines are “louder and faster.” De Gironde called wines from hotter years “extraterrestrial,” meaning they tasted more of the weather than the land.

“In 2009, the vintage got bigger than us, and the wine was opulent, exuberant, with extreme concentration,” he said. “The 2010 was the best one we’ve made so far. Hopefully not the last best one.”

While those heralded vintages were spectacular, the cooler years were also compelling. “The ’04s were not welcomed here in the United States. But after five years, they began to open up,” de Gironde said. “The 2006 was undrinkable at first, and we thought, ‘uh-oh,’ but it calmed down a year ago, and it should age well. Those who know Cos will find the spice and length the wine is known for.”

The 2005, in contrast, “was a dream vintage,” he said. “It was sunny when it was supposed to be sunny, and it rained when it was supposed to rain. If you can find any Bordeaux from 2005, you should buy it.”

De Gironde’s career has taken him from Bordeaux to Champagne, where he helmed the cult producer Krug, and back. He joined Cos d’Estournel three years ago, in time to blend the 2012 vintage, the youngest we tasted at Ripple. His unflinching assessment of the earlier vintages was a delightfully honest and refreshing take, with frank advice for Bordeaux fans looking for value as they spend three digits or more for a bottle.

The wines we tasted at Ripple consistently showed Cos d’Estournel’s style and terroir. Each vintage displayed flavors of dark fruits – blackberries and currants – with curry spice of fenugreek and cardamom. Age added mushrooms and soy sauce, the umami of well-matured wine.

The vertical tasting of several vintages highlighted how winemaking evolved over time at Cos d’Estournel and in Bordeaux, in general. I swooned for the 1985, even more so than the storied 1982 vintage. The ’85 struck an ideal balance between fruit and spice, without the heaviness of oak and tannin. The 1996 and 1989 were delicious as well, drinking at their peak now.

Before 2000, de Gironde said, Cos typically harvested 60 or more hectoliters of grapes per hectare of land. That yield “was fine in an ideal vintage, but you’d have four or five years around it that were weak.”

Starting in 2000, Cos and other wineries lowered yields to about 45 hectoliters per hectare. The wines became more intense and consistent, though of course they still varied by vintage. That style culminated in those storied but different 2009 and 2010 vintages.

De Gironde has begun tweaking the style of winemaking at Cos d’Estournel, picking grapes a few days earlier than in previous vintages to achieve a more elegant style with slightly lower alcohol levels.

“My dream wine is power and elegance,” he said. “Power is easy. Power with elegance is difficult to achieve.”

How will these changes show in the wine?

Wait and see, he said.