WineInk: 2024 Wine Spectator’s top 100
We live in an age of rankings, ratings, and listicles.
It seems that everything, from college sports teams to ski resorts to the sexiest men alive, is fodder for those who want to make lists. I guess the exercise of ranking stuff in some sort of order does help provide context and makes for good conversation and debate. But most of the time the conjuring of “best of” lists feels a bit contrived.
Still, each year, being a wine guy, I find myself looking forward with great anticipation to the annual ranking of the Top 100 Wines of the Year in Wine Spectator.
For over three decades, Wine Spectator, the bi-monthly bible of wine in America, has a list of their selections for the “Top 100” most exciting wines of the year. This November, the publication released their picks for 2024, and any of the wines selected would be welcome in my glass.
When The Top 100 list was originally conceived in 1988, it was created to provide a service for readers to help them navigate their way through the wines of the world. Since then, however, the list has become a powerful force in the global wine industry, and making the Top 100 can make an unknown brand both relevant and profitable and change the lives of the producers forever. Especially those who garner the top spot on the list.
Tim Fish, senior editor of the publication, says in a video about the process of selecting the wines, “We take it so seriously. Somehow, every year, we come together and figure out a way to pick out 100 wines that represent what we love about wine.”
It is a prodigious task indeed.
While it may seem like a fun process, tasting and rating wines, it can be a long and laborious journey for those at the publication whose job it is to whittle the world’s wines down to the final 100. They estimate that the team spends 3,600+ hours a year evaluating wines. The tasting team started with 5,765 wines that have scored 90 points or higher in blind tastings this year. These wines represent successful wineries, regions, and vintages from around the world.
The goal is to provide a list featuring wines that are not just tasty, but also offer great value, can reasonably be found in wine shops, and have great stories behind them. Or, as they say at Wine Spectator, wines that bring “quality, value, availability, and most importantly the energy and story behind the wine” to the table. The wines are tasted blind and rated on a variety of criteria. Once the best wines are identified, they then undergo a thorough review, so the final rankings can be determined.
Of course, what everyone wants to know is who is the sexiest man alive … er… which bottle was ranked No. 1 on the 2024 Wine Spectator Top 100 list. Drum roll, please.
From Chile, the 2021 Viña Don Melchor Cabernet Sauvignon Puente Alto, Puente Alto Vineyard took the top spot on the list. This is just the second time a wine from Chile has been named as the #1 wine, and it is a tribute to the quality of wines that are being produced in South America in general and the Maipo Valley wine region in particular. This is the 35th release of wines from the Viña Don Melchor portfolio, which is a subsidiary of the Chilean wine company Viña Cocha y Toro. The wine is priced at $175 a bottle, and there are 5,000 cases of the stuff imported to the U.S.
Wine Spectator Senior Editor Aaron Romano said of the wine in his notes: “A remarkable effort that channels the finesse of the vintage with rich, muscular edges, offering a base of graphite and cassis notes that gather around elegant layers of dried rosemary and white pepper.”
You can find the Top 100 list in full in the Dec. 31 issue of Wine Spectator, which is on newsstands now, and you can get more info on the top 10 wines in short and informative videos on the website at top100.winespectator.com/2024. These videos, hosted by the editors of the magazine, are a great way to learn about the producers and pedigrees of these wines.
You might assume that the most expensive wines would dominate a list prepared by the people who have access to virtually every wine in the world. But surprisingly, the Top 100 is a reasonably-priced collection. If this were a wine list in a restaurant, it would be considered extremely affordable. Just over 20% of the 2024 Top 100 wines are priced over $100, with the most expensive wine being the 57th-ranked Stag’s Leap WineCellars Cabernet Sauvignon Stags Leap District Cask 23, coming in at $375 a bottle. Wine Spectator’s James Molesworth says the wine “is loaded with gorgeous flavors of boysenberry, mulberry, and blackberry puree that maintain a sleek and refined feel as violet, iris, and anise notes add range, lift, and energy.”
On the other end of the price spectrum is the Italian Santa Cristina Cabernet Sauvignon Toscana. At just $12 a bottle, it’s a steal. In fact, nearly a quarter of the selections on this year’s Top 100 cost $25 or less, and the average price for the entire list is just $68.
At those prices, $6,800 would buy the entire 100-bottle list. It would be a worthy cellar.
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