If you’re not living in France, it’s easy to get the idea that Bordeaux and Burgundy wines dominate French winemaking. They command most of the high prices, account for page after page of the wine lists of Michelin-starred restaurants and make the headlines in international wine auctions.
So it came as a bit of a shock when assembling the Top 100 Wines of France 2024 that so many wines from so many other regions made the list. Alsace, Beaujolais and Rhone Valley wines in particular rose to the top when we considered their fantastic quality, reasonable prices and exciting, divergent taste profiles.
The No. 1 wine in the Top 100 Wines of France comes from Alsace, but it’s not a riesling. It’s not even a white. The Albert Mann Pinot Noir Alsace Grand Cru Hengst Grand H 2022 takes top honors for its giant depth, refinement and precision at one tenth the price of a comparable grand cru red Burgundy.
This is the first vintage in which the Alsace authorities allowed wineries to put the grand cru names on their reds, so this wine, grown in the Hengst vineyard, is especially exciting and unique. In previous years Albert Mann labeled it simply as Grand H.
The three main factors in deciding the wines’ rankings in the Top 100 are quality, price and the “wow” factor. This beauty from Albert Mann has all three in abundance.
Senior Editor Stuart Pigott tasted it in Alsace this past spring, gave it 100 points and raved, “It’s hard to get past the overwhelming, enveloping nose that is like a whole garden of summer flowers and berries, with a slew of delicate, spicy nuances completing the tapestry of aromas. Enormously concentrated and compact, but every bit as refined and precise on the full-bodied palate.”
Several other Alsace wines made the list, too. Yet red wines from the Rhone Valley took 25 spots, the largest share of this diverse and value-oriented roster.
Overall, we selected 68 reds, 18 whites, 10 Champagnes and four sweet wines. The average price of the Top 100 is $149. Forty-four wines cost less than $100 and 15 of those are under $50, which is not bad at all for wines that are rated from 95 to 100 points.
The Top 10 wines include two more from Alsace, the northeastern region of France that borders Germany. Our choice for No. 2 is the Domaine Zind Humbrecht Pinot Gris Alsace Grand Cru Rangen de Thann Clos Saint Urbain 2022, whose 2021 vintage was our No. 1 French wine last year. This perfect-scoring wine offers lightning-strike freshness and raciness married to incredible exotic fruit, spice and smoky complexity. Stuart said he had never come across an Alsace pinot gris quite like this, even from this exceptional site with its volcanic soil.
Two sweet wines from Bordeaux came in at No. 3 and No. 4. Both earned 100-point ratings, showing how a vintage like 2021, which was difficult for the great chateau-bottled reds, made excellent, brilliant white wines – especially the sweet, late-harvest wines of Sauternes.
The Château Suduiraut Sauternes 2021 is No. 3, a wine made entirely from semillon grapes for only the second time in the estate’s history. “It was tragically beautiful,” Christian Seely, the head of AXA, which owns Suduiraut, said of the vintage, alluding to the brilliant wine they made despite the 85 percent loss of his grape crop from the powerful spring frost that year. “We made hardly any sweet wine, but it one of the greatest ever.”
James described it as full-bodied and very sweet but not at all cloying, citing flavors of mandarins, clementines and peach tart in a patisserie with an endless finish.
READ MORE BORDEAUX TASTING REPORT: TRAGIC BEAUTY AND SOME SWEET SAVIORS
No. 4 is the Château Lafaurie-Peyraguey Sauternes 2021, sharing the same incredibly sweet, spicy, ginger, ginseng character of perfectly developed botrytis that the Suduiraut 2021 and Chateau d’Yquem 2021 display. Yquem also earned 100 points but ranked as No. 30 because its price is three times as expensive as the other two.
The only Burgundy in the Top 10 comes from a less-heralded village in the Cote de Nuits. The Domaine Charles Audoin Marsannay Au Champ Salomon 2022 (No. 5) sells for $46 – a ridiculously low price for a wine with an almost limitless, velvety sensuality and spectacular vitality.
Beaujolais is famous among French red wines for value, and that was a factor for the eight Beaujolais selected for the Top 100. At No. 6 and costing just $31, the Château de La Chaize Brouilly Clos de La Chaize Monopole 2020 underscores the remarkably high quality of certain vineyards in certain villages when handled by great winemakers. It’s one of the new giants of Beaujolais that nonetheless retains the lightness of touch and elegance that people prize.
At No. 7 is the first Rhone wine, a classic from a great property, the Domaine de la Solitude Châteauneuf-du-Pape Vin de la Solitude 2021. It was an erratic vintage here, but those who like elegant reds have a select number of great wines to choose from. This retro masterpiece is based on the humble counoise grape variety. It is the rising star of the 13 grapes allowed in this appellation because of its naturally modest alcohol content and the delicacy of its wines.
The third Alsace wine in the Top 10 is the Domaine Weinbach Riesling Alsace Grand Cru Schlossberg Ste. Catherine 2022 at No. 8. It’s a perfect-scoring, astonishingly dry wine that feels so effortless, so delicate and so breathtakingly precise.
One of the clearest conclusions Stuart drew while tasting in Alsace was that 2022 was a sensational vintage for dry riesling from the grand cru sites with granitic soils, such as the Schlossberg, Brand and the less well-known Wineck-Schlossberg.
A specific site and terroir were equally important for a white Rhone that came in at No. 9, the perfect-scoring M. Chapoutier Ermitage Blanc Le Méal 2021. What an extraordinary interplay of smoky fresh pineapple and stony mineral character this super-concentrated but medium-bodied white Rhone offers, although at a cost of about $225, it’s not inexpensive.
A red Bordeaux breaks into the Top 100 at no. 10. The Château L’Église Clinet Pomerol 2021 is rated 99 points and priced way below the first growths. This small estate highlights how the 2021 vintage made some superlative wines based on merlot despite being one of the most difficult grape-growing seasons in recent history.
We kept a ceiling of $500 per bottle for the Top 100 Wines of France and were able to squeeze in several other outstanding Bordeaux reds from 2021 – like the Chateau Cheval Blanc St.-Emilion 2021 at No. 87 – though not as many as usual. Several other wines from the Right Bank at more reasonable prices are included, like the Chateau Canon La Gaffeliere St. Emilion 2021 at No. 60 and $74, and the Château Rocheyron St.-Emilion 2021 at No. 91 and $56.
READ MORE RHONE 2024 TASTING REPORT: SAILING THROUGH THE WINDS OF CHANGE
The Rhone red standouts include about half from Chateauneuf-du-Pape, where grenache is the touchstone grape, and half from the Northern Rhone that are based on syrah. From both ends of the valley we selected mostly classic, established properties from the 2022 and 2021 vintages that are not inexpensive but outperform in quality to bring plenty of value to the table.
Burgundy is certainly present on the list, including several grand cru whites along with a few great reds that have escaped the hype and rocketing prices of recent years. Look at No. 18, the white Louis Latour Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru 2022, for a great example, or No. 88, the red Domaine Faiveley Corton Grand Cru Clos des Cortons Faiveley 2022.
Ten Champagnes are nothing to miss either, when you are willing to pay a luxury price for a luxurious wine.
The Top 100 Wines of France can lead you to discover or rediscover a wide spectrum of offerings that are quite often more elegant, complex and refreshing than you might expect – not to mention more affordable than the few collectible and super-expensive wines that seem to make a lot of the noise.
We hope you use this cross-section of fantastic French wines as a guide to broadening your pleasure through the artistry of cutting-edge winemakers working with classic, timeless vineyards.
– Jim Gordon, Executive Editor
Note: The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated in 2024 by the tasters at JamesSuckling.com. You can sort the wines by vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.
