Our Top 100 Wines

It’s been a great year for tasting wine at JamesSuckling.com. We rated almost 25,000 wines over the last 12 months, our all-time record, and we found so many exciting wines, from 2018 Bordeaux and Napa reds to 2020 German and Austrian whites, not to mention all the other superb wines from Argentina, Australia, California, Italy and New Zealand. Plus, we found a few gems from Chile, Hungary, Portugal and South Africa.

Most of the wines were reviewed in our tasting office in Hong Kong this year. Wineries sent their samples directly to us, which was easy because Hong Kong has no duties or taxes on wine. We tasted. We Zoomed. We discussed all the top wines. In addition, editors Stuart Pigott, Nick Stock, Bill McIlhenny and Nathan Slone were busy traveling in Europe, Australia and the United States interviewing and tasting with winemakers. It was fulfilling to have at least some of our team in the field gathering information and rating wines after more than a year of no travel for myself and others.

We have been communicating all this through our social media channels, especially our Instagram account, which has one of the largest audiences in the wine world, with 292,437 followers as of yesterday. Plus, regular subscribers to our website and newsletters continue to grow.

The main criteria that went into selecting this year’s list of the best 100 wines of the world was quality, which is why none scored less than 98 points. Another factor was that the wines must have had a minimum production of 4,000 bottles. Then we looked at pricing and finally what we call the “wow” factor. The latter are wines that excite us emotionally as well a technically as tasters.

Fuligni Brunello di Montalcino Riserva DOCG 2016

99 Points

“The complexity and beauty of this wine is something else on the nose, offering perfume, cedar, dried flower, black cherry, blueberry and crushed stone. Orange peel, too. Full-bodied with incredible layers of ultra-fine tannins that give this wine horizontal depth that almost seems endless. Extremely long and lightly chewy at the end. This is one for the cellar. Try after 2026.”

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By James Suckling | JamesSuckling.com