Wine & Spirits - December 2020 - 43

December
2020 Tastings
OUR RECOMMENDATIONS
As we produced this issue during the COVID-19 shutdowns, we made some changes to our usual tastings protocol. Rather than tasting with panelists in our offices,
each of our editors tasted while sheltering in place, knowing only vintage, appellation and variety-and price, if the wine is $15 or less. They then sent second bottles of the
wines, bagged and numbered, on to a guest panelist, to discuss which wines they would recommend, and why. This process helped us sustain our goal: to work with outside
tasters to determine which wines are worth recommending, and to avoid the prejudices any one critic might exercise, consciously or not, against certain styles or types.
Our screening panels recommend, on average, 35 to 45 percent of the wines we taste, though our team is tasting only focus categories during the
pandemic, and so the percentages tend to be higher, due to the limitations imposed by those categories. Our ratings are determined and reviews
written by the editor overseeing that region's wines. That editor rates the wines based on the same limited information: only vintage, appellation and variety. Our
goal with these ratings is for each reviewer to provide you with a consistent point of view. In the pages that follow, we present all the wines our editors have scored 90 points
or better, as well as all the Best Buys-wines we have recommended that cost less than the median price for their respective categories. Subscribers can access our online
database, including all wines tasted and reviews of all recommended wines.

YEAR'S BEST
CHAMPAGNES, P. 45
CABERNETS & BLENDS, P. 56

TASTED

RECOMMENDED

TOP WINES

BEST BUYS

281
648

134
351

96
255

19
100

251
204
67
22
33

157
101
30
13
21

138
53
16
12
16

17
25
7
1
7

1,506

807

586

176

FOCUS
BAROLO & BARBARESCO, P. 82
RIOJA REDS, P. 93
GEORGIA, P. 98
TOKAJI, P. 100
2018 VINTAGE PORT & LBV, P. 102

TOTAL WINES
The Top Wine and Best Buy numbers are a subset of the
total number of recommended wines.

SOME MEMBERS OF OUR TASTING PANELS FOR THIS ISSUE
LA: Nathaniel Muñoz, Eve Bottle Shop; Dana Farner, Massanois Imports; Stacie Hunt, Splash Productions; Nina Sventitsky, Napa Valley Wine Academy; Sydney
Love, journalist. NYC: Nacho Monclús, Despaña; Jamal Rayyis, Palate Savvy; Courtney Schiessl, Consultant. MA: Whitney Asher and Justin Leprovost, Brava,
Lenox; Michael Kowalski, Miraval, Lenox; Amy Loveless and Daniel Osman, The Dream Away Lodge, Becket; Tom Morrison, South Egremont Spirit Shoppe,
South Egremont; Katie Salinas, Martignetti, Taunton. Hudson Valley, NY: Tim Buzinski, Artisan Wine Shop, Beacon; Kayla Decker, City Winery, Montgomery;
Ken Macguire, Fox & Hound Wine Shop, New Paltz; Kristie Petrullo, Petrullo Wine Company, Cold Spring; Dominick Purnomo, Yono's, Albany; Joe Robitaille,
Homespun Foods, Beacon; Mark Ruoff, Mountain Brauhaus, New Paltz.
The label reproductions that appear in our tasting reports are a form of advertising. After we complete our tastings and record the results, our marketing
team offers wineries the opportunity to draw attention to their reviews with label reproductions. There is no obligation to advertise, and our scores and reviews are in no
way affected by a winery's decision regarding advertising. Neither does advertising influence our selection of the wines we taste; our tastings are open to all. All bottle
reproductions in the magazine are purely editorial art.

WINE & SPIRITS

DECEMBER 2020

Wine & Spirits - December 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - December 2020