DiningBuzz! - Wine Enthusiast Magazine top wines and spirits of 2009

http://www.wineenthusiast.com/templates/topwines_2009.asp?AfID=ZTS100CS

Broken down as follows:

Top 100 Best Buys
Top 100 Cellar Selections

Coming in a few weeks:

Top 25 Beers
Top 50 Spirits
Enthusiast 100 represent the most diverse and dynamic wines




Nothing on either list really caught my eye

On the Best Buys, the A-Z is decent. On the Cellar Selections, I've had the Brancaia Il Blu, not the 2006 vintage though, and enjoyed it.

whored magazine. you can buy points with advertising dollars. marvin has a goldmine.

i presume in response to Parker, not many aussie, south american, chateneuf.

we were on a guided "walk around"(sort of like a pub crawl) last month. we told at this one place that all wines on the list were half price. i was not familiar with Halls, and ordered one of them. i was famaliar with whitehall lane, and ordered one of them. the wine guys there did not seem all that happy with the fact that i was spending 135 bucks on wine.........

whored magazine. you can buy points with advertising dollars. marvin has a goldmine.

I totally agree. The vast majority of the wine press is utterly worthless in terms of actually giving consumers useful, objective information.

There are a few authors who provide honest, non-swayable with marketing dollars, tasting notes, but they too just provide opinions from authors who have their biases - but it's at least possible to calibrate one's own palettes with theirs. These include Parker's Wine Advocate, and several others who have much smaller but more specialized followings. But the glossy mags with tons of ad pages are all shills for their advertisers. None more so than the Wine Spectator and the Wine Enthusiast.

And yet, millions follow their ratings and buy the recommended wines. :) Winemakers all over the world try to create wine that will get those high scores and bring in the bucks. The wine rags must be doing something right.

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These days it seems all the wine press is whored... even the sacred cows mentioned above.....

And yet, millions follow their ratings and buy the recommended wines. :) Winemakers all over the world try to create wine that will get those high scores and bring in the bucks. The wine rags must be doing something right.

It was after the first time, back in college, that I got laughed by the local wine & spirit shopkeep for bringing in a torn-out Wine Spectator article that I endeavored to discover a bit more about wine and transcend most of the pr spin and propaganda that passes for wine journalism.

I was bouncing off the walls when I saw the documentary "Mondovino" last year. ;)

And yet, millions follow their ratings and buy the recommended wines. :) Winemakers all over the world try to create wine that will get those high scores and bring in the bucks. The wine rags must be doing something right.

i think the raggers are taking advantage of the label buyers. i really think that most expensive wine drinkers couldn't blind taste and sort cheap from expensive champagne, same with most reds and whites. sweet and dry.

in fact, i find that a lot of "fine wine store" owners cannot tell when the wine is corked.

It was after the first time, back in college, that I got laughed by the local wine & spirit shopkeep for bringing in a torn-out Wine Spectator article that I endeavored to discover a bit more about wine and transcend most of the pr spin and propaganda that passes for wine journalism.

I was bouncing off the walls when I saw the documentary "Mondovino" last year. ;)

That guy was doing you a favor :) That being said, a lot of wine enthusiasts I know do use some of the rags as a rough guide to stuff they may not have been exposed to before, but each person has figured out who (in the wine world) their palate agrees with. Such cannot be said for the "average" wine drinker I'm afraid. :(

That documentary was absolutely superb, I really really enjoyed it myself.

i think the raggers are taking advantage of the label buyers. i really think that most expensive wine drinkers couldn't blind taste and sort cheap from expensive champagne, same with most reds and whites. sweet and dry.

in fact, i find that a lot of "fine wine store" owners cannot tell when the wine is corked.

I suspect it's a symbiotic relationship, the score whores take advantage of the rags to inflate their ego, to get the wines that "the holy critics" deem to be the next big thing...But I agree fully, most expensive label drinkers couldn't tell a Duval Leroy from a simple sparkling Burgundy...and that's keeping it pretty simple.

As for cork..well that's a whole different debate. I have even debated with an FT'er about whether a wine was corked or not. To me it was right there grabbing my palate, to him it was a subtle nuance in the background that could have even been Brettanomyces (sp). I still think he was wrong. :) I've noticed that there seems to be a lot of variation in being able to detect the "corked" flavor component, some wine store owners I know are amazing and others are pretty oblivious to it.