If you’ve taken the time to read our staff selections for wines and producers of the year, you may have noted great minds seldom think alike. At least not here at Wine Review Online, where our well traveled staff is literally all over the map on this subject.
I think Editor Michael Franz must have rolled his eyes when he saw Michael Apstein’s picks: A vigneron from the Beaujolais region as top producer and a $10 petite super Tuscan as top wine. Franz and Apstein have had many a good-natured but spirited debate over the merits of Beaujolais, and I can see Apstein has not been dissuaded from his belief that some Beaujolais does indeed belong in the company of the wine elites (a position on which we both agree).
Gerald Boyd expressed his admiration for the Sherry producers of Jerez, a dedicated bunch trying valiantly to preserve traditions and a wine style that is no longer much in vogue.
And our resident Master of Wine, Mary Ewing-Mulligan (who can deconstruct a wine with the best of them in her bi-weekly On My Table column) pays tribute to the great Pinot Noir producer of Carneros, Saintsbury, and Cerretto’s brilliant 2001 Bricco Rocche Barolo.
Our columnists also singled out wines and producers from Greece and Alsace, Washington and California, Champagne, Australia, Alto Adige, Montsant and Chile.
It is a diverse and interesting collection and our correspondents do a fascinating job of explaining and defending their selections. I can see the logic behind every pick. They’re all deserving winners in my book.
As for myself, I clung close to home, going with a producer and wine that are both from California’s Napa Valley. What this exercise demonstrates is the great depth of winemaking skill and the thread of passionate and ambitious enthusiasm for quality that is driving the wine world we live in these days.
Even in Beaujolais, of all places!
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