Last year was the biggest tasting year of my career as a wine critic and the most extensive ever for JamesSuckling.com. With my team of tasters, seven in total, we rated 41,063 wines in 2023. A large part was reviewed in our offices in Hong Kong and Italy as well as other parts of the world, where we also visited wineries and vineyards and interviewed winemakers. I think we all accumulated more air miles than any other wine media as a group and it was done on our own dime.
Of the tasting notes posted on our site last year, 39,680 were from bottle and 1,383 were from barrel.
Much of the wine we reviewed last year came from Italy and France, accounting for 9,175 and 7,048 tasting notes, respectively. U.S. wines were the next biggest category with 4,435, followed by Spain at 4,143. Australia wasn’t far behind with 3,099 wines tasted and then Argentina with 2,390 and Chile with 1,521. Germany was next at 1,956 wines while Austria comprised 1,048 reviews. South Africa, Portugal, and New Zealand were grouped close together with 905, 845, and 790, respectively. We tasted almost 500 wines from China as well as 288 from Hungary and about 200 each from Japan, Greece and Uruguay.
Other countries whose wines we tasted included Armenia (4), Bosnia-Herzegovina (6), Brazil (23), Bulgaria (21), Canada (35), Croatia (3), Czech Republic (6), Denmark (3), England (12), Georgia (10), Israel (90), Lebanon (1), Mexico (1), Peru (6), Poland (6), Romania (8), Serbia (53), Slovenia (86), South Korea (6),Switzerland (9) and Thailand (3).
The regions with the largest share of wines reviewed at JamesSuckling.com were California at 2,916, Tuscany at 2,745, Bordeaux at 2,399, Piedmont at 1,646, Rhone Valley at 1,418 and Veneto at 1,078.
About 80 percent of the wines we tasted received scores of 90 points or higher, which highlights the incredibly high quality of wines being made around the world. It’s sometimes hard to think back to how bad the quality of wine was when I started as a wine critic with The Wine Spectator in December 1981. I remember being excited to find an outstanding quality wine. Most had all sorts of flaws in winemaking.
Only about 10 percent of the wines were rated 95 points or more, with the following breakdown:
- 99 points (.35 percent);
- 98 points (.86 percent);
- 97 points (1.66 percent);
- 96 points (2.65 percent);
- 95 points (4.64 percent).
JamesSuckling.com only gave 66 wines perfect scores (100 points) of the total we rated and posted in 2023, which is .17 percent overall. We all at JamesSuckling.com believe that 100-point wines are made each year in the world considering the precision and excellence in viticulture and winemaking in just about every corner of planet wine. And we have the confidence and passion to tell our readers.
Some of the trends we see in the world of wine from our tastings in 2023 include:
- a continued attraction to lower-alcohol wines that offer more transparency in character as well as freshness in drinking;
- an increase in high-quality wines from lesser-known countries and regions;
- growth in white wine popularity, even in Asia;
- more single-vineyard and unique parcel wines;
- the reduction of price justifying ultimate quality. In other words, it doesn’t need to cost a fortune to buy wonderful bottles of wine from an array of regions.
We at JamesSuckling.com all look forward to this year’s tastings, travels and conversations in our search for great wines. There has never been a better time in the history of the world to buy and to drink fabulous quality bottles offering unique tastes, experiences and enjoyment. Stay tuned each week for more wine reviews from all over the world.
– James Suckling, Editor/Chairman, with the contributions of Jo Cooke, Tasting Editor.
