QRW’s 24th Annual
California Best of The Best

QRW Tasting Team

After six months of blind tasting, after tasting eight major varietals, and after more than 800 wines, QRW’s 24th Annual Best of The Best in California was completed. We tasted what we feel are most of the Best wines. Our credo is that these wines must be readily available at retail, at restaurants, or online from the winery. As always, this means “trophy wines” — those fine but expensively unavailable wines (except by private subscription) — were not tasted. If you want to pay $2,000 or more for a bottle of Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon, fine. But since we can’t buy it, we won’t taste it. The same is true of some quasi-cult but highly allocated wines. Invariably, we get e-mails protesting this, claiming that, since we have not tasted the trophies, we have not tasted the best. But to us the argument is still specious. If you pay a lot for a bottle of wine — and you grossly over pay for trophies — then suddenly it becomes more precious. You start fantasizing over it. If you rate your “best” by “price,” you’re an investor. Our experience with such people is that they often don’t even like wine. They know the price but not the beauty of them. We offer you superior quality and availability. And another thing about trophy wines: most know the auction scheme they prompt. Buyers on the private subscription list will get their hands on two bottles of Screaming Eagle, drink one and offer the second to eBay, usually returning them the money they laid out for the two. Still worse, many of the “privates” own trophy wine but can’t bring themselves to drink it. They are voyeurs, not wine lovers. It’s the eternal Midas moral: wine is their gold, their hoard, which ultimately paralyzes them from any enjoyment.

The Wines

The 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon vintage is splendid, and along the long lasting lines of the 2001 and 2002. And speaking of splendid, you have to know the 2005s are the most impressive California Zins we’ve tasted in a long time. The 2005 Pinot Noirs are very good indeed, but it was a 2004 Sonoma Coast Vineyards and a 2006 Belle Glos that stole the show. One of the sad moments of the tasting was that we could not find a single Merlot we liked, and regretfully decided not to offer any as Best of The Best.

Designation

QRW designates its very best wine in each varietal with Best of Show moniker. This is followed by our 5-Star selections (the high 90s for those needing numbers), and our 4-Star selections (low 90s for those still needing numbers). Definitions of what constitutes 5- and 4-Stars follow. Note: Prices here are offered by the wineries and may vary from region to region.

— Richard L. Elia