Our look for the world’s best wines reaches its climax, and no prizes for thinking where most are from.
© Maison Leroy|The red wines of Leroy have long represented the pinnacle of the fine white wine scene and their supremacy shows no indications of reducing.
We have actually fielded many inquiries during this series on the world’s finest white wines about when the excellent reds of Burgundy would appear. Fear not, Burgophiles, your day has come.
Well, not entirely, but this list of the world’s finest wines, as defined by the world’s most prominent critics, is gradually becoming a procession of the Cote d’Or’s finest. A year ago, there were six Burgundies on this list; today there are eight. Go back to 2020 and there were five Burgundies in the leading 10.
What’s truly interesting from an objective perspective is how far ahead Burgundy is stretching from the chasing pack. Bordeaux– the extremely embodiment of great white wine, and the model upon which numerous other red wine markets were based– merely doesn’t feature. Recently, it has actually been Napa instead of Bordeaux that filled out the blanks on our list, but even that level of involvement is gradually disappearing.
This year, for example, there is a single white wine from Napa on the list (and a port), recommending that critics are satisfying subtlety over power these days, or Pinot Noir over Cabernet. Or maybe a few of them are just attracted by the fact that a wine that costs so much to purchase merely need to be fantastic. Whatever the factor, Burgundy’s supremacy might well remain unchallenged from here on in.
Pinot Noir is reaching Cabernet in popularity with our users and Pinot searches are doggedly eating into Cabernet’s lead– a lead that when appeared insurmountable. However, with all the difficulty over Burgundy in the previous years– driven by huge rating inflation and enormous rate walkings– Cabernet might see itself in a subordinate position within a year or more.
So let’s take a look at the wines, but first let’s speak about ratings. Our ratings are aggregated critic scores, which suggests we add ball games together and after that balance them out to offer what is in effect the Wine-Searcher rating. This is a reflection throughout a large range of critics, so we aim to supply the fairest and most accurate rating reflection of a red wine.
Our scores determine to 4 decimal locations, which represents the final placings on the list below.
The World’s Best Red wines on Wine-Searcher:
The Burgundy dominance is not the only thing to keep in mind here. The other thing is the Leroy supremacy; of the eight Burgundy red wines on the list, just one does not carry the name “Leroy”– which one is DRC, which Lalou Bize-Leroy was a partner in prior to setting out and focusing on her own wines.
It’s genuinely impressive to see one female dominate the world of fine wine in this method and it’s rather a tribute to the woman herself and the group she put in place around herself– specifically in a company that has actually so typically been a male-dominated sphere.
However let’s look past the Leroy impact; the other big change is ball games. Two years ago, three red wines made this list with aggregated ratings of 96 points; none had 98-point scores. In 2015 there were four 98-pointers, but still two 96s. As you can see above, 7 of this year’s list have attained aggregated critic scores of 98– and that’s throughout all vintages. So for DRC, for example, to typical 98 throughout all the 30-something vintages we list on Wine-Searcher is really impressive.
The other thing to mention, naturally, is cost. In 2015, there were four wines with international typical market prices in excess of $10,000 a bottle. This year, there are 7, which is perhaps as accurate a barometer of Burgundy’s popularity amongst collectors and financiers as you can get. Burgundy is clearly making better wine than ever, the only problem is having the ability to manage it.
And possibly that’s the extremely rock that Burgundy’s rise will die on– just when it is more popular than ever, it may be pricing itself out of the marketplace.
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