Our Wine Critics’s 10 Favorite Wines They Tasted This Year
At a holiday party this week, we were asked what our favorite wine is, to which we very diplomatically replied, “The wine in my glass that I am drinking with people I really like.” In pursuit of bringing you the best bottles and wine stories week after week, we sipped, swirled, and spat just shy of 7,000 wines this year, and while most were phenomenal (we’re pretty selective in deciding what to accept for our tastings), several of them really stood out, in most cases thanks to the exceptional settings in which they were tasted. The majority of these were tasted professionally, while a couple were opened and enjoyed with friends. Fortunately, we take good notes and can look back on our favorite glasses and moments in a wine-filled year. Here are the 10 best wines we tasted in 2024.
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Coche-Dury 2019 Meursault
On a rainy night in Burgundy, this incredible bottle got opened in a friend’s hotel room as we watched an Ireland vs England rugby match with a bunch of French wine experts before heading to dinner in Nuits-Saint-Georges. Gorgeous texture and minerality plus a bold lemon-curd flavor reminded us of the beauty of well-made Burgundy even at the village level, as this is neither a premier cru nor grand cru. We were all deeply saddened when the bottle was empty; it was even worse than when England won the match in a surprise upset.
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Château Mouton Rothschild 2009
The extraordinarily charming Philippe Sereys de Rothschild was our host for a dinner at Christie’s in Rockefeller Center celebrating the reveal of the new artwork on Château Mouton Rothschild 2022. De Rothschild is the kind of dinner companion who makes you feel there is no one else present at the table despite the number of guests and continued pouring of older vintages. There were a lot of wines to love in our glasses that evening, but our host’s description of the 2009 as “absolute pure velvet” was absolutely spot-on.
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Hospices de Beaune 1961 Volnay
While taking a pre-dinner peek at the wine cellar beneath the home of Laurent and Catherine Delaunay during the Hospices de Beaune weekend this year, a few of the guests noticed some bottles from 1961, which was a stellar vintage year in wine regions across Europe. Although our hosts had planned pairings with each course, the surprise of the evening was a bottle of Hospices de Beaune 1961 Volnay that was opened with the cheese course. The Delaunay family purchased the entire barrel, and only a few bottles remain; this one’s tattered label made us fear for the wine within. With flavors of raspberry, pomegranate, coffee, and a touch of smoked meat, it was astonishingly fresh and offered a bright cranberry finish.
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Château Cheval Blanc 2009
A gift given to us by a wine-world friend in early 2020, we set this bottle aside for a special occasion that never materialized during a year blighted by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the spirit of “Don’t wait for a special occasion, make it a special occasion,” we recently brought it to our favorite BYOB spot in Manhattan’s Chinatown, where our friends delighted in its dazzling acidity and vivid fruit flavors with hints of earth and spice that were perfect with Peking duck.
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Ridge 2021 Monte Bello
Hailing from California’s Santa Cruz Mountains, the legendary Ridge Monte Bello has been produced for over 50 years. We were at a wine bar with friends visiting from Switzerland, and in addition to a bottle of Italian white ordered off the list, we popped this bottle open to show them the amazing quality of one of America’s finest and most famous wines. While it is still incredibly young, it also has a gorgeous level of acidity and flavors of blackberry, cranberry, dark chocolate, dried Mediterranean herbs, and a touch of butterscotch that overrode slightly grippy tannins that are sure to mellow beautifully with age.
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Elvio Cogno 2020 Ravera Barolo
One of the highlights of our job is going to wine dinners where we not only meet some of the best winemakers in the world but also get to spend time with our colleagues from other publications, many of whom have become friends over the years. On an unseasonably hot night in June, a group of us gathered in a private room next to Don Angie in the West Village that featured Elvio Cogno’s winemaker and proprietor Valter Fissore pouring his Barolos. The feathery tannins of the 2020 Ravera Barolo were the first clue to this wine’s beauty, and layers of pomegranate, black cherry, milk chocolate, dried thyme, and clove made a lasting impression on the palate during an evening that morphed from work event to one of the best dinner parties of the summer.
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Andre Brunel 2022 Cuvée Centenaire
The people behind the wine are often what makes a bottle so memorable, and eighth-generation winemaker Fabrice Brunel and his mother, Anne, are no exception. Over a lunch at Bar Boulud that could have gone forever, we chatted about everything under the sun while enjoying Brunel’s 100 percent Grenache expression of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Made from vines over 150 years old and aged only in stainless steel, the elegant wine showcases the purity of fruit and terroir with flavors of cherry and raspberry and soft touches of spice.
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Dom Pérignon 2015
Although we love to drink wine with the folks who made it and hear their thoughts on the vintage, the team at Dom Pérignon pulled out all the stops before a dinner celebrating the 2015 release. A large pack of wine lovers were invited to a hidden grotto outside an event space near Barcelona for a private group tasting. The lawn was covered with posts that were each topped by a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, and as cellar master Vincent Chaperon told us to don a set, an army of waiters appeared bearing trays covered with glasses of DP 2015. Rather than expound on the qualities of the bubbly in our glasses, Chaperon remained silent as Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” played so that we could each retreat within ourselves to appreciate the Champagne’s beautiful texture and structure, which provide an exquisite backdrop for flavors of apricot, lemon zest, and rose petal bathed in luminous acidity.
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Egon Müller 2015 Scharzhofberger Kabinett Alte Reben Riesling
As almost everyone in the Salle Belle Époque of the Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo rushed toward the ballroom’s entrance to catch a glimpse of the arrival of Prince Albert II of Monaco, we sat at our table and continued chatting with winemaker Egon Müller, who is a fascinating conversationalist and whose Riesling was the wine of the night as far as we were concerned. We were there for a dinner celebrating wine made from francs de pied, or ungrafted grape vines, and this slightly off-dry Riesling was a perfect pairing for thinly sliced avocado topped with finely diced shrimp and saffron-laced fleur de sel.
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Kopke 1974 Colheita Porto
It’s not every day—or even every year—that we get inducted into a wine society, so we were incredibly honored to be asked to join the Port wine brotherhood known as the Confraria do Vinho do Porto. Over the post-ceremony lunch at the Yale Club in New York City, Kopke winemaker Carla Tiago opened this ethereal single-vintage tawny, which is rich and silky and has incredible flavors of orange marmalade, roasted cashew, white chocolate, and nutmeg. Over lunch we made plans for our next visit to Porto, and we proudly walked home with our new fraternity’s gleaming silver tastevins slung around our necks.
Authors
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Mike DeSimone and Jeff Jenssen
