Wine & Spirits - Winter 2012 - (Page 1)

editor’s note 12,000 wines & counting The Absolute 100-Point Scale has come to deﬁne wine criticism around a mythical concept: Absolute Quality. This particular grail is regularly ﬁlled to the brim with substantial wines, made from carefully selected grapes, aimed toward polish and perfection. Our Annual Buying Guide is based on a diﬀerent 100-point scale. We assume quality is a given in a great wine; what we’re looking to recognize are the wines that share a sense of place as well. How well can we connect a wine to its region or, perhaps, to a more speciﬁc place, through its ﬂavors and structure? It’s not a parlor game or a test of deductive reasoning. It’s a form of pattern recognition, one that anyone interested in taste can learn to perceive. That pattern recognition is what fascinates us about wine—and how we value it. Over the past 12 months, we’ve considered the patterns of taste in 12,000 wines. Our 100 Best Wines of the Year are the bottles that made the strongest connections with our critics, each presented with a note that attempts to describe those connections and what might have brought them about. Our 100 Best Buys are the bottles that made a deep connection with the critic and came in under the median price of all the wines we’ve tasted in its category— the super performers in their price range. We focus the greatest energy on our 100 Wineries of the Year, a list of estates that put out not just a single great wine, but a range of wines that spoke to us this last year. A delicious ﬂavor triggers our memories in ways that may be subliminal—triggers that have created whole industries around ﬂavor, texture and aromas in food and wine. Learning how to parse those taste memories helps us separate the fact from the technological ﬁction. It helps us identify what we value in the ﬂavor of a wine: Authenticity. We’re seeking out the people who create delicious and memorable ﬂavors with the grapes they grow, without resorting to technical wizardry or winemaking additives. Our tasting process helps us focus in on such talent. In the pages that follow, we’re pleased to present the most compelling wines and wineries from a year’s worth of tasting: great drinking for the year to come. Joshua Greene http://www.warre.com/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - Winter 2012

Wine & Spirits - Winter 2012
Editor’s Note
Contents
Directory: Wine & Spirits’ Wineries of the Year.
2013 Calendar of Wine Events
Book of the Year: The final word on wine grapes.
Spirits of the Year: Ten exciting new bottles in 2012.
2013 Winery of the Year Awards
26th Annual Hall of Fame: Our top performers over the last 26 years.
Wineries to Watch: Eight promising producers.
American Wineries of the Year: 42 top wineries from the United States.
International Wineries of the Year: 58 exceptional producers from worlds old and new.
100 Best Wines
100 Best Buys
New Stuff: Essentials for 2013.

Wine & Spirits - Winter 2012