I confess, I didn’t vote for Chateau Ste. Michelle‘s $9 Riesling when it won Wine of the Year at the Critics Challenge Wine Competition in May. But I loved the wine, especially at that price. And since the
event, I’ve taken notice of how widely available it is.
I had that same wine a couple weeks ago at Sea Critters, a restaurant in Passe a Grille Beach, Florida, where the staff didn’t know that Viognier is a grape. I was grateful to see Chateau Ste. Michelle on a list of big production wines chosen seemingly at random. I could have been drinking a heavily processed, overly oaked beverage. Instead I was drinking a genuine Riesling, with lively fruit flavors and excellent balance.
Chateau Ste. Michelle is the world’s largest producer of Riesling. It’s also a great evangelist for one of the wine lover’s favorite grapes. This summer the Washington state winery hosted Riesling Rendezvous, an enormous undertaking bringing together Riesling producers from around the world. The event allowed winemakers to compare notes, generated stories and blog items around the country, and just generally got people thinking, talking about and drinking Riesling.
I would tell you more about Chateau Ste. Michelle’s operations, but quite honestly, I skipped the opportunity to tour there because I figured they would indoctrinate us anyway during the event. But they didn’t: The winery’s owners were genial and self-effacing hosts, at enormous expense, and really didn’t self-promote at all.
So my Winery of the Year essay is a little short. All I can tell you is this: Chateau Ste. Michelle is run by good people. They make great wine at a great price, and they made 500,000 cases of it, so I could drink it at Sea Critters. I toasted them in Florida, and I toast them now in cyberspace.
Wine of the Year: Perrier Jouët Fleur de Champagne 2002
It’s so hard to pick a single Wine of the Year.
I was tempted to go cheap and choose Big House White in the 3-liter box: That’s the wine I chose to have at Thanksgiving. But value already played a large role in my choice of Winery of the Year.
So then I was tempted to remember some great wines I tasted abroad this year, like Israel’s elegant Domaine du Castel Grand Vin 2007, or the Peter Lauer "Kern" Saar Riesling Fass 9 2009 that wowed me in Germany, or the Domaine Vaudoisey-Creusefond 1er Cru Les Epenots Pommard 1999 that made me swoon in Burgundy.
But this year, I’m thinking of availability, and I’m still remembering the tough decision we made at the Critics Challenge between a $9 Riesling and a $140 Champagne. Sure, the former was better value: how could it not be? And yet, which would I drink on my own birthday?
In fact, I drank the latter: A bottle of Perrier Jouët Fleur de Champagne 2002. I’m not sure how many wines I tasted this year: More than 
1,000 for sure, but probably less than 10,000. In any case, when it came time to choose one bottle to have on my birthday — and to choose the food to pair with it, rather than the other way around — this is what I picked.
What a sensuous Champagne this is: Austere on first opening, but expansive with air, it’s yeasty and toasty and yet has a lively citrusy core. I drank the heck out of it. I sent a taste back to the chef and he sent out two apps and a dessert; that’s how much he liked it. And our server said he had never tasted a better sparkling wine in his life.
Generosity doesn’t come naturally to me, though. Sure, I poured the server a taste, but as he was praising it, I was thinking, "those are three less sips for me."
When you want to hold the bottle upside down over your mouth to make sure you don’t miss a drop, that’s a Wine of the Year.
42