The Speck's Top 100 are out. Your thoughts?

A silly, contrived exercise. Of the hundreds of thousands of wines in the world, that someone would think they could pick one "best" is laughable. That an army of people suddenly have to have that wine and prices on that winery suddenly jump just makes me shake my head.

.....and the same goes for the International Wine Challenge and Decanter World Wine Awards.

That said, I'm pleased to note that there are more wines than usual, which I would be happy to see on my table, in that top 10 and remaining 90, even one made from Godello.

While out running errands, etc. today, I stopped at the local big wine store and picked up a bottle of #33 - 2012 Ravines Riesling Finger Lakes Dry ($17). I also picked up a bottle of 2011 Merkelbach Ürziger Würzgarten Riesling Spätlese. I can see a Riesling tasting party in the near future.

I kinda root for my favorites to avoid being in the top 100...and especially the top 10. It just means I'm going to be paying much more for them next year, and they will be harder to get.

IIRC, I bought the '08 [Pegau] for $28 a bottle during the fire sale

Wow! That's dirt cheap. I bought a few bottles for about $35 per and thought that was a steal. I was not sure how the wine would age so we drank them down. The '08 vintage, at least of the Pegau, was vastly underrated in my opinion. I'm hoping for more "difficult" CdP vintages.

IIRC, I bought the '08 [Pegau] for $28 a bottle during the fire sale

Wow! That's dirt cheap. I bought a few bottles for about $35 per and thought that was a steal. I was not sure how the wine would age so we drank them down. The '08 vintage, at least of the Pegau, was vastly underrated in my opinion. I'm hoping for more "difficult" CdP vintages.

Yeah, Sam, for the hotter regions such as the S Rhone and Napa, I find that I usually prefer "off" years in which ripeness is downplayed and more structured wines are produced. Of course, I still avoid the truly disastrous years such as '02 in the S Rhone, but I've really enjoyed my '98 CalCabs and '96 Chateauneufs. YMMV of course.

Mark Lipton

Yeah, I remember when the '98 CalCabs got less than enthusiastic reviews because they were "too tannic; too stern" from people like the Spectator. But the curse of the time (restaurants absolutely did NOT want to buy the '98s because of their rep) turned out to be a boon for the wine drinker who could then buy them at reasonable prices and store them for a couple of years until they turned rather supple and lovely (for non-wine non-fruit flavor elitists, that is.)

The '98 Burgundy vintage came out about the time we were getting more heavily into the wine hobby. I happened onto a bunch of Jadot Clos des Ursules from the "lackluster" '98 vintage in a closeout bin. The wine was delicious! We snapped up the rest of it along with several other heavily discounted '98's. Luck was on our side as since that time the vintage has been reassessed much more favorably.

[Jenise]

I don't pay any attention to the Top 100 at all anymore, except as a curiosity. But, one positive trend seems to be a greater focus on value over the past couple of years - look at how many under $20 wines are in the top 50, for example.

True. But check out offerings like the 2012 Chateau Ste. Michelle SB. I bought a bottle last week just to see if there was anything stupendous there--there wasn't. It was just the reliably decent SB they always make. It may represent value, but categorically it's nomination is a throw-away and there are many better at a similar or at least under $20 price.

Is that the Ch. St. Michelle Horse Heaven Hills Sauvignon Blanc, which was not bad QPR? I bought that in years past and it was always above average for a Northwest SB, although hardly worth rating in the top 100 anything. Critics, as I recall, tended to give it scores in the high eighties and once in a while a 90. They could hold their own in comparison with, say, similarly priced New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs. The more I think about them the more I recall a pleasantly grassy taste.

[Jenise]

Is that the Ch. St. Michelle Horse Heaven Hills Sauvignon Blanc, which was not bad QPR? I bought that in years past and it was always above average for a Northwest SB, although hardly worth rating in the top 100 anything. Critics, as I recall, tended to give it scores in the high eighties and once in a while a 90. They could hold their own in comparison with, say, similarly priced New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs. The more I think about them the more I recall a pleasantly grassy taste.

Yes, that one. We had a bottle last week when we were in Maui and drinking primarily Sauvignon Blanc. And it's not bad at all, as you describe; it's just that it was easily bested by California's St. Supery, Kenwood and Cade, as well as every single New Zealander we had including Greywacke and Momo.

[Robin Garr]

t check out offerings like the 2012 Chateau Ste. Michelle SB.

Not to be overly cynical (but realistic), how heavily does Chateau Ste Michelle, a corporate producer, advertise in the Speck?

[Jenise]

t check out offerings like the 2012 Chateau Ste. Michelle SB.

Not to be overly cynical (but realistic), how heavily does Chateau Ste Michelle, a corporate producer, advertise in the Speck?

No idea. I haven't read the magazine in years, except when I'm at the car dealership where a few old copies are always in the waiting room. But like you I suspect this was probably an act of paw-licking for the giant corp that now runs Ste. Michelle--I forget who that is. Was something like Stimson Lane, but I think that got swallowed by an even bigger whale.

Hoke knows a whole lot more about this sort of thing than I do, but I do know that Chateau Ste Michelle, a huge, beautiful Woodinville, Washington winery I pedal by now and then on my bike, was bought in 2008 by Altria, owner of Marlboro, although for all I know since then Michelle may have been aquired or come under the acquisition radar of some other giant as it has had a complicated ownership history. By Washington State's modest standards, the winery is a behemoth, shipping 2.7 million cases last year, of which 1 million are Reisling, making it the world's biggest Riesling producer, or so their PR department says. It's easy to assume that the wines are all uninteresting commercial products, and the small neighboring Seattle wine shops where I do business don't carry most of them, maybe because of that negative image, but it would be hard to argue that overall quality is bad if one accepts Jeb Dunnuck's TNs and point scores in the most recent Wine Advocate review of Washington State. Dunnuck gave eight Michelle wines scores ranging from 88 to 92, with a 91 for a 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon Canoe Ridge Estate Horse Heaven Hills.

Of course the Wine Advocate doesn't accept advertising, but it's sure tempting to assume other magazines that do might be catering to the winery. One could point to not only The Wine Spectator top one hundred Horse Heaven Hills Cab Sauv rating but also the "Winery of the Year Award" for 2004 by the Wine Enthusiast, and something called "a winery of the year" award that Michelle receives more or less automatically just about every year from Wine and Spirits magazine, making Chateau Ste Michell, according to their puff piece of a website, "the most honored American winery...in the past 27 years."

I don't have a single bottle of Chateau Ste Michelle wines in my cellar and haven't tasted one in a few years, but I do have lingering respect for a winery that years ago helped get the Washington wine industry off the ground by promoting around the world not only their own Chateau Ste Michelle wines but the wines of other, presumably unrelated Washington wineries, at a time when nobody had heard of the state's wine.