Talk-A-Vino

Do you like numbers?

Do you like to play with numbers?

I do – so let’s have a bit of a [almost traditional] fun with wine numbers. I’m talking about analyzing the Top 100 lists from the major wine publications.

Top 100 is one of the most anticipated and coveted topics in the wine world. There is a lot of anxiety and activities surrounding the Top 100 lists. Wineries proudly put their Top 100 “membership” on the bottles; publications, such as Wine Spectator, create a lot of drama, slowly unveiling their Top 100 selections over a week; wine stores are anxious to get and offer as many of the Top 100 selections as possible; consumers get an extra reason to buy the Top 100 wines as their greatness had been established by the experts. So let us take a closer look at the Top 100 Wines of 2024 lists from the major publications and compare them side by side.

The majority of the wine publications present their Top 100 lists, many of the publications even offering a multitude of Top 100 lists – for example, James Suckling publishes separate Top 100 lists for most of the major wine countries; Wine Enthusiast offers Best Buys, Cellar Selection and Enthusiast 100 lists. As I have done in the past, for this comparison I’m using Top 100 lists from James Suckling, Wine Enthusiast, and Wine Spectator. For the Wine Enthusiast, I’m using the Enthusiast 100 list. Also note that while James Suckling and Wine Enthusiast 2024 Top 100 list links are specific to the year, Wine Spectator has one link for all top 100 lists from 1988 until 2024 (going through those is a fun exercise in itself).

Now, let’s discuss the particulars.

Wine of the Year

Let’s start with the Top wines of 2024. Out of the 3 top wines, 2 are reds and one is sparkling – not very surprising as red wines dominated the top 100 lists at all three publications. James Suckling’s Top wine of 2024 was the 2015 Bertani Amarone della Valpolicella Classico (JS100, $125). Wine Enthusiast’s Top wine of 2024 was the 2013 Roco RMS Brut Delayed Disgorgement 10-Year Sparkling Willamette Valley (WE98, $125). Lastly, the Wine Spectator Top wine of 2024 was the 2021 Viña Don Melchor Cabernet Sauvignon Puente Alto Puente Alto Vineyard Chile (WS96, $175).

Regions

Here is how the three Top 100 lists stuck up when it comes to the wine regions of the world:

I purposefully left all regions that were included in the previous years so you get a better picture. As you can see James Suckling’s list was dominated by Italian wines. Wine Spectator had a penchant for California, but not as much as the Wine Enthusiast, where almost 40% of the Top 100 wines came from California. New entrants compared with the previous years were the wines from Georgia and China.

Wine Types

Here is the comparison classified by the wine types:

As you can see, red wines dominated all of the lists. The last time I did this comparison back in 2021, and compared to that table I had to add a row for the fortified wines. I’m happy to see that all 3 Top 100 lists included at least one fortified wine. Also, Wine Enthusiast included a good number of sparkling wines, with most of them coming from Oregon out of all places (and those will be even harder to find than Champagne due to a very limited production).

Ratings

Ratings continue to be radically different between all three lists. James Suckling ratings don’t go lower than 97, and Wine Spectator’s top rating was 98 with only a single showing.

I don’t know why there is such a disparity in ratings, but that makes this comparison even more interesting.

Prices

Prices are always an interesting subject, and the presentation of the prices was different this year among all 3 lists. Wine Spectator had prices for all wines included in the description – I can only assume those are suggested retail prices. James Suckling had no prices listed but instead had prepared links for the Wine Searcher to retrieve a current market price for each wine – which makes sense as many of these wines might be on the market for a while and might command premium even before they were included in the Top 100 lists. Wine Enthusiast had prices listed for most of the wines, and also had buying links for all of the wines that were tailored to a specific source – some to Wine.com, some to Wine Searcher.

In the Wine Spectator’s Top 100, the most expensive wine was priced at $375 (MSRP). 19 wines on the list were priced at $100 or higher. The least expensive wine was only priced at $12 (#49 on the list). There were 6 wines on the list priced under $20, a very reasonable number. The top 10 wines, if you could find and buy them all at once, would cost you $1,032.

The most expensive wine on James Suckling’s list was priced at $407 (market price). Only 37 wines were priced at less than $100, which makes 63 wines to be priced above $100 – again, keep in mind that these are market prices according to wine-searcher, so YMMV. The least expensive wine and the only one under $20 was priced at $17, however, interestingly enough, it was wine #2 on the Top 100 list. The top 10 wines combined would cost you $677.

Lastly, the Wine Enthusiast’s Top 100. The most expensive wine was also the most expensive among all 3 lists, priced at $612. 33 wines were priced above $100, so 67 wines were priced at less than $100. The least expensive wine and the only one under $20 was priced at $19 (wine #35, price from wine-searcher). The top 10 wines would cost you $1,100.

Conclusion

I was happy to see lots of familiar  – not just familiar, but rather, favorite – producer names sprinkled across the lists. Turley Zinfandel as #14 on Wine Spectator’s list, Carlisle Zinfandel as #21, San Felice Chianti, Calera, Elena Walch; Lopez de Heredia and Cayuse Bionic Frog on the James Suckling list; Inniskillin Cab Franc Ice Wine and Wente Vineyards on the Wine Enthusiast list. I’m sure you will find lots of familiar names too.

I hope you are having as much fun looking through the data I presented here as I had compiling it. There is nothing to be concluded from this exercise, but I find it fun. If you think there is any other data you would like to see as part of this analysis – I will be happy to oblige.

Enjoy!

Whoosh…

It is the last month of the year already – do you believe it? There are very few facts left in this life – time moving in one direction is still one of them.

The arrival of December means that it is the time to look back at the year which is about to bid adieu, and reflect. For example, on all the wines, good and bad ones. And maybe rate them, right?

I know that many of the true wine aficionados scoff at the bare idea of the wine ratings, especially those coming from major wine publications – I’m not talking about wine collectors who live and die by those. Top wine lists are usually equally ignored by those passionate wine lovers. I, however, appreciate all of the scores and top lists as a reference – and also the numbers I can play with.

At this point, all major wine publications produced their Top 100 wine lists – some even multiple Top 100 lists, such as James Suckling with Top 100 wines of Chile, France, Spain, New Zealand, and all other major winemaking regions… That means a lot of numbers to digest and dissect – not something I can pass. I set out to waste spend a good amount of time to convert Top 100 lists from James Suckling, Wine Enthusiast, and Wine Spectator from all the different formats into a set of excel files which then can be compared – and now I can report on my findings.

As I already mentioned, there are multitudes of Top 100 lists available from these wine publications – for this analysis, I used the Top 100 lists from Suckling and Wine Spectator, and Top 100 Cellar Selections from Wine Enthusiast – this one is the best match for the two other lists, unlike The Enthusiast 100 or 100 best buys. All the lists are produced based on the rating of more than 20,000 wines by each publication during 2021 (25,000 by James Suckling and 22,000 by Wine Enthusiast). Some publications also considered wine production volume and availability as an important decision factor.

Wine of the Year

Let’s start with the Top wine of 2021. It is interesting that out of these 3 top wines, 2 were whites – not something you see very often, but at least both whites were Chardonnays. James Suckling’s Top wine of 2021 was the 2020 Kumeu River Chardonnay Kumeu Mate’s Vineyard New Zealand (JS100, $73). Wine Enthusiast Top wine of 2021 was the 2018 Ramey Hyde Vineyard Charodnnay Carneros (WE100, $70). Lastly, the Wine Spectator Top wine of 2021 was the 2018 Dominus Estate Napa Valley (WS97, $269). Whether you like it or not, but Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon clearly ruled the world in 2021…

Regions

In all three top lists, there was somewhat lesser diversity than in the lists from last year – 4 countries/regions present in the 2020 lists were absent in 2021. Here is the summary for you in the form of the table:

I purposefully didn’t remove the countries from last year’s lists so it is easy to see which are missing. Overall, there were not too many surprises. The US, France, and Italy dominated all 3 lists. It is interesting to note a good number of wines from Portugal in the Wine Enthusiast list, as well as good showing by Oregon and Washington in Wine Enthusiast and Wine Spectator lists. The biggest surprise for me might be a relative weakness of Chile’s presence across lists and literally negligible showing by South African wines.

Wine Types

I don’t believe I paid much attention to the types of wines on the Top 100 lists last year – I built a comparison table though this year:

I classified all wines as dessert, red, Rosé, sparkling, and white. Port and sweet Riesling wines (BA etc.) were classified as dessert. As you can see, red wines rule the world. While the Wine Enthusiast list includes no Rosé, at least it has a good showing of dessert and sparkling wines, which makes perfect sense. I honestly believe we should see more of the Rosé wines in the Top 100 lists, but oh well… Also wondering when we are going to see skin-fermented wines on the Top 100 lists – unless I missed something this year.

Ratings

Ratings this year are radically contrasting between different lists. James Suckling’s list doesn’t have any wines with ratings less than 98. And Wine Spectator’s list has no wines with 100 ratings, only one wine with 99 rating, but 12 wines with the rating of 90:

Both James Suckling and Wine Enthusiast lists have a substantial showing of 100-rated wines – either the wines are getting better and better, or the critics are getting more and more lenient – still, 25 wines with 100 rating is very impressive.

Prices

This might be one of the most interesting and most irrelevant parts of the top 100 wine lists information – and analysis. It is interesting because of course, wine aficionados what to know “how much”. It is irrelevant because the majority of these wines can’t be acquired due to limited availability and high demand – everyone wants to drink “best wines”. Nevertheless, let’s talk about prices.

The wines on James Suckling’s list are ranging from $1,723 per bottle (most expensive) to $24 for the least expensive. Only 45 wines are priced at less than $100. You will need to spend whopping $23,595 to acquire all 100 top wines and $2,108 on the Top 10 wines. It is important to note that prices are not included on the James Suckling Top 100 list – each wine has a link to the wine-searcher page which lists the price according to the wine-searcher’s algorithm.

Wine Enthusiast Top 100 list wines are priced from $780 to $20. 65 wines cost less than $100, and 28 wines are less than $50. You will need to spend $11,061 to acquire all Top 100 wines and $1,047 on the Top 10. Wine prices are included on the Wine Enthusiast list, but I’m not sure how they were sourced, as some of the wines are priced at $222 or $343, which can’t be MSRP pricing.

Wine Spectator’s list happens to be the least expensive overall, with only $6,194 needed to acquire all top 100 wines. Top 10 will set you back by $1,444. The wines are ranging in price from $309 to $13. 85 wines are priced at less than $100, and 68 wines are less than $50.

Conclusion

I hope you are having as much fun looking through all the data as I had compiling it. There is nothing to be concluded from this exercise, but I find it fun. If you think there is any other data you would like to see as part of this analysis – I will be happy to oblige.

Enjoy!