Food & Wine’s Top 15 Wines of 2024

2022 Anselmo Mendes Contacto Alvarinho ($20)

This Portuguese white from Anselmo Mendes is sleek and minerally, with far more nuance than you’d ever expect at the price and wins the nod for my favorite white wine value of the year.

It comes from Alvarinho grapes grown in the north of Portugal along the Minho River, which borders Spain (where the grape is known as Albariño), and is called “Contacto” because Mendes leaves the grapes on the skins for a short time to add texture and depth, something typically not done with white varieties. I drank more than my share of it while traveling in Portugal in the spring. It’s also a super partner for any kind of shellfish.

2023 Tiberio Pecorino ($27)

Pecorino — the grape, not the cheese — from Italy’s Abruzzo region is lemony-almondy, brisk, and irresistible. Christiana Tiberio’s version stands out from the rest because of the complexity it offers at its relatively modest price.

I poured this a lot this summer with family and friends up in Maine, and it’s the kind of wine that everyone seems to love; it provokes conversation, it’s impossible not to want another glass, and the bottles seem to empty far too soon. Though, I suppose, that’s an excuse to just run out and buy some more.

2021 Greywacke Marlborough Wild Sauvignon ($31)

Our F&W readers’ favorite white grape this year is Sauvignon Blanc, which in a poll edged out Chardonnay for the first time in, well, forever. I figured I’d better taste a lot of them, which resulted in June’s “What to Drink Next” column. 

I wasn’t surprised to find that New Zealander Kevin Judd’s top bottling was my overall fave — he’s a brilliant winemaker and has been at the top of the Sauvignon game for years. As I noted in the column, “greywacke” refers to the type of bedrock in the vineyards that he farms, and “wild” refers to Judd’s use of native (rather than cultivated) yeasts for fermentation. It’s a gorgeous, deeply distinctive white — flinty and smoky, with lots of creamy citrus fruit and a supple, rounded texture. And I’ll repeat: If you think all New Zealand Sauvignons taste the same, this will immediately change your mind.

2022 Girolamo Russo A’ Rina Etna Rosso ($35)

I finally had a chance to meet Giuseppe Russo at New York City’s Terroir wine bar after several years of loving his wines, and writing about them in my recent book The World in a Wineglass. A former high-school music teacher, he’s charming, impressively talented, and definitely one of the new (or new-ish) names to follow if you are intrigued by the elegant transparency and complexity that Nerello Mascalese gets when it’s grown on Etna’s volcanic soils. I wrote in June that his Etna Rosso was a perfect summertime red, fragrant with red berry fruit, light-bodied, and lively. I’ll double-down on that to say that it’s a terrific wintertime red as well.

2021 Le Macchiole Bolgheri Rosso ($40)

This is really a nod to the Le Macchiole’s remarkably inspiring owner, Cinzia Merli, who I portrayed in a story from our April issue. She came through tremendous personal hardship a few years into Le Macchiole’s existence when her husband Eugenio Campolmi died unexpectedly, and though at the time everyone expected her to sell the estate the two of them had founded, she persevered. Today she makes some of the greatest wines of Tuscany’s Bolgheri region. 

Her Paleo Rosso ($125) is benchmark Italian red for me — when I was researching my story we drank a bottle of the 2005 together over bistecca alla Fiorentina at the wonderful local restaurant Osteria Magona — but her basic estate red is, in the terrific 2021 vintage, a remarkable wine, batting way above its somewhat humble “rosso” designation. It’s both elegant and powerful, and has a long life ahead of it. I bought several bottles for my own cellar, just to see how it ages.

2022 Hiedler Heiligenstein Riesling ($58)

Hiedler has been family-owned since the mid-1800s, and in 1906, the Archduchy of Austria honored them for their wine’s quality. World War I put an end to the archduchy, but the Hiedlers are still going strong, and this refined, stony white is a knockout. Out of a number of extremely good Austrian whites that I tasted for my column earlier this year, it was the one that kept lingering in my mind.

2019 Luis Seabra Vinhos Mono A Alfrocheiro ($59)

I had this wine at a stellar restaurant in Oporto, Portugal, called Cozinha das Flores. There, chef Nuno Mendes does brilliant takes on traditional Portuguese dishes, like smoked giant squid from the Azores sliced into pappardelle-like strips, served atop a chickpea and cod tripe stew. Yes, it sounds odd, but it was ridiculously good. So was this Dão red from the Portuguese Alfrocheiro grape, abundant in wild berry and minty herb flavors, and made by one of Portugal’s best winemakers. 

This one is hard to track down in the U.S., admittedly. If you can’t find it, anything Seabra makes is well worth drinking, and his more affordable Xisto Illimitado red and Xisto Illimitado white are both great intros to what he does.

2019 Vrucara Feudo Montoni ($65)

I wrote about Feudo Montoni at length in my book The World in a Wineglass, because Fabio Sireci and Melissa Müller’s estate in the heart of Sicily is a benchmark for the kind of wines I love best: those from vineyards farmed with a sense of responsibility to the local environment, from owners who live on their land, that embrace the history of a place and a culture, and that simply taste terrific, too. 

Vrucara, their top red, comes from a tiny parcel of pre-phylloxera Nero d’Avola vines planted back in the 1800s. The name comes from a local herb, vruca, sort of minty and resinous, that grows around the vineyard. The wine itself is intensely alive, its red and black fruit flavors riding on a line of fine acidity, and gains complexity with air. Decant this one. 

And, if you ever get the chance, visit Feudo Montoni. The place is beautiful, plus Sireci and Müller’s work is truly inspiring. I’ll quote Sireci: “For me, the concept of organics is in the word, at least in Italian. Biologico, which comes from bios in Greek, which means life. Yes, it’s a tool, it’s not putting anything chemical into your vineyard, but for me what’s more important is the sense of contribution to the bios, to life.”

2014 Peay Vineyards Maritima Estate Chardonnay (current vintage, $66)

Andy Peay says, “Chardonnay from the west Sonoma Coast has such singularity. The wines keep that innate freshness; a fully mature, ripe grape still has that distinctive citrus note.” And he’s right. They also age extremely well, if this bottle from the Peays’ estate vineyard is any guide. I drank it while visiting the property. The place isn’t easy to get to; it’s on a ridgetop four miles from the coast, down a narrow, winding road, but once you arrive, you’re rewarded with some extraordinary views, not to mention some very good wine (make a reservation in advance). And the winery’s Pinot Noirs and Syrahs are equally impressive.

2006 Domaine Tempier La Migoua (current vintage, $107)

Finally, after years of wanting to get to Domaine Tempier, the iconic Bandol estate, I finally fulfilled that pilgrimage this past summer. And while it’s true that Provence, where the Bandol appellation is located, is known for rosé, and equally true that Tempier’s highly sought-after rosé is one of the best there is — put two sommeliers in a ring with a bottle, and tell them that only one gets to put the wine on their list, and you’ll see what fightin’s all about — it was the Tempier reds that I couldn’t forget.

Bandol reds are made from Mourvèdre, a grape with plenty of attitude. The estate takes that sometimes feral intensity and somehow gives it elegance and poise, without losing any of the personality. This 2006 was drinking gorgeously, but the current 2020 vintage ($107) is great, too.

2021 Hirsch Vineyards Raschen Ridge Pinot Noir ($105)

I tasted all of Hirsch’s 2021 Pinots while researching an upcoming story, and across the board they are stellar — pure expressions of far Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, intensely aromatic and pinpoint precise. There’s not one I wouldn’t recommend, starting with the flagship San Andreas cuvée (more or less a picture of the entire vineyard, which covers 72 acres). 

This single-block bottling edged out the rest. It’s named for the painter Henry Raschen, who lived on what’s now the Hirsch property back in the late 1800s, and is utterly thrilling to taste with all its vibrant raspberry-strawberry-blood orange flavors, herbal nuances, and long, lingering finish. Hard to resist now, but if I were lucky enough to own several bottles, I’d put some away for five years at least.

1996 Château St. Jean Cinq Cépages (current vintage, $125)

I poured this 28-year-old Cabernet-based blend from Sonoma County at our inaugural Food & Wine Classic in Charleston back in September. It was a great event (I’m biased, but still) and this was a great wine. In fact, it was far better than I expected it to be, because not all California Cabernets from that era have aged nearly as well. There’s still fruit here, in a kind of dried-cherries-and-plums way, and heaps of savory notes that suggest dried leaves, baking spices, and tobacco, plus a silky, inviting mouthfeel. 

If you’re lucky enough to have some, drink it. Otherwise check out Château St. Jean’s 2022 vintage ($125), which is svelte but powerful, and full of intense black currant–blackberry flavor. It would make a stellar holiday wine gift, in case you’re still looking for one.

2019 Cayuse Viognier Cailloux Vineyard ($125)

Viognier is a pesky grape that can just as easily be oily and flabby as it can be thin and characterless. But when it’s good, it’s a delicious balance of the rich and the elegant. That’s most often found in Condrieu, in France’s Rhône Valley, but Walla Walla winemaker Christophe Baron makes one of the best U.S. versions I’ve ever had. I opened it one night at home with some other wines, just to taste through them for work, and ended up setting aside everything else and luxuriating in this bottle’s ever-shifting flavors: think tangerines, melon, white peaches, jasmine, wildflower honey. 

Maybe Baron’s French heritage gives him a knack for the variety. Maybe it’s that the vines grow in one of the West Coast’s great terroirs, the Milton-Freewater rocks district in Oregon. Maybe it’s just that Baron is a mega-talented winemaker. His wines are hard to track down, and they are by no means inexpensive, but wow.

2013 Champagne Louis Roederer Cristal Rosé ($600)

At this year’s La Fête du Champagne in New York, a multi-day blowout celebrating all things Champagne, I was lucky enough to sit down to a multi-vintage tasting of Cristal Rosé. It’s one of the great rosé Champagnes, but even more than that, people don’t often realize how amazingly well it ages — even vintages from the 1990s and 1980s were still glorious. 

But possibly my favorite wine of the night was this more recent 2013 bottling, from a vintage that isn’t nearly as acclaimed in Champagne as the 2012 right before it. Great winemakers can make great wines even in less highly regarded vintages, and there’s no doubt that Roederer chef du cave Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon is a great winemaker.

1945 Dow’s Vintage Port (current vintage, $90)

I mean, what can you say? World War II had just ended in Europe when this wine was made, though the war affected Portugal far less than many other places, as it remained neutral throughout the conflict. 1945 was also an extraordinarily good vintage, war or no war, with perfect weather, and in the Douro Valley produced legendarily long-lived wines. 

I tasted this while in the Douro Valley myself, after a dinner with Rupert Symington, whose family has owned Dow’s since 1961. This bottle came from his father James’s personal cellar. Vintage port was one of the first wines I fell in love with when I was first getting into wine, and I still feel that it can attain a magic that very few wines do. 

This was old, no question, but emphatically alive: translucent pale ruby-hued, fascinatingly aromatic, gossamer-silky in texture, a kaleidoscope of flavors. Even for someone whose life is writing about wine, moments, and wines, like this are truly rare. Will the current vintage, 2017 ($90) last as long? Quite possibly. But will you?