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Wine Spectator is a leading and highly influential wine periodical, headquartered on Park Avenue in New York City.
Wine Spectator has published its annual roundup of the year’s “most exciting wines” each year since its 1988 inauguration of the Top 100.
In 2008, editors blind-tasted more than 19,500 newly released commercial wines from every wine-making country in the world, some 5,300 of which earned scores of 90 or higher, rated on the 100-point scale that has become the wine industry standard throughout the Western hemisphere.
The four criteria that determine final selections of the Top 100 are “quality” (represented by the score), “value” (the retail price when the wine is released), “availability” (based on U.S. case production or international imports), and a subjective, qualitative “X-factor” called “excitement.”
Final selection of the Top 100 is not determined by any formulative equation but represents the editors’ judgmental enthusiasm for each wine they taste. As usual, wines listed below have a California appellation unless another is listed.
I note that Wine Spectator includes among its highly regarded Top 100 wines only two wines with retail prices of $15 or less (there were 11 last year), but 19 wines are priced at $20 or less, and just less than one-third of the “Top-100” have retail prices of $25 or less.
The top values that might be found in this market are Australia’s Leasingham 2007 Clare Valley “Magnus” Riesling — $12 (No. 44) and St. UrbansHof 2007 Mosel-Saar-Ruwer QbA Riesling — $15 (No. 56).
Other good values include Chateau Puygueraud 2005 Cotes de Francs, Austria’s Winzer Krems 2006 Gruener Veltliner Trocken, plus Italy’s Fattoria di Felsina 2006 Chianti Classico and Sogrape 2005 Dao Callabriga.
On the other hand, 36 of the Top 100 wines were released with retail prices of $50 or more, and 13 sell for $100 or more. The costliest of 2008’s Top 100 are both from Bordeaux: Chateau Cos-D’ estournal, St.-Estephe 2005 (No. 28, score 98) and Chateau L’ Evangile, Pomerol 2005 (No. 21, score 100!). Eight other Bordeaux wines were included in the Top 100 of 2008, significantly more than any other region.
Good premium-priced values also include:
To learn more about the Top 100, go online at www.winespectator.com.
John Breitlow is a retired Winona State University speech professor who began learning about good wine in the 1950s while serving in Vienna, Austria, with U.S. armed forces.
