DEI Comes to "Best Of" Wine Lists...And It Works

VinePair's Best Wines of 2024 list is an exercise in Diversity

Lists of the “best wines of the year” are fun. I don’t think there is any denying this. They provide answers to “What am I missing”? When they appear, they also immediately provoke us to see if any of the wines from our team made the list. Yet one thing these lists are not is objective. This is a critical aspect of the Best Of lists that make them so compelling.

I want to illustrate all this and more by pointing you to the most recent “Best Wines of 2024” list from VinePair. Published on Wednesday, the list is probably the most diverse (technically, regionally, and varietally) you’ll come across. Moreover, VinePair’s list of The Best also illustrates an important aspect of these lists we see every year at this time: they are windows into the ideology of the list makers.

The first thing to ask about VinePair’s Best Wines project is why should you trust VinePair to provide such a list. It’s an important question. Conveniently, the editors at VinePair answer that question in a section of the report entitled, “Why You Should Trust Vine Pair”:

“Throughout the year, VinePair conducts dozens of tastings for our “Buy This Booze” product roundups, highlighting the best bottles across the world’s most popular wine and spirits categories. As part of this work, VinePair’s tasting and editorial staff samples thousands of bottles every year. This helps us keep a finger on the pulse of what’s new and exciting. It also provides us with the crucial context needed to distinguish the simply good from the truly great — whether from a quality or value-for-money perspective, or both. VinePair’s mission is to offer a clear, reliable source of information for drinkers, providing an overview applicable to day-to-day buying and drinking.”

If you read this closely, you’ll not so much get a sense of what qualifies the folks at VinePair to offer their views on the Best Wines of 2024. Instead, you get an idea of what they are looking to lift up with their list:

-Wines that are “truly great”
-Wines of great “quality” or great “value”
-Wines that are for “day-to-day” buying and drinking.

The editors conclude their explanation of their list by letting us know their Top 50 wines were ranked based on 4 characteristics: quality, value, regional diversity, and availability in the U.S.

Consider this. The vast majority of the wines on this list range from $20 to $40 per bottle. The least expensive are two Rosé bottlings at $20. The most expensive at $150 is the Burgess Reserve Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.

What’s abundantly clear is that the VinePair list of “Great” wines is celebrating bottles that nearly all of us can afford. This demands an answer to a question: What about the Bouchard Père & Fils 2020 Grand Cru (Chevalier-Montrachet) at $675 per bottle? Or what about the Delas Frères 2020 La Landonne Syrah (Côte Rôtie) at $340 per bottle? If these are not “great wines” or among the Best of 2024 (and the consensus among those who review and rate these wines is that they are truly great and remarkable) then what are they? What is the VinePair list, for that matter?

Obviously, the reason wines like the two I mentioned above as well as other highly celebrated First Growths, Grand Cru Burgundy, and top Champagne are not on the VinePair list is because the editors at VinePair either didn’t taste them (should they have??) or they preferred to focus on lifting up less celebrated wines for the sake of diversity. I’m almost positive it is the latter.

As mentioned above, wine tasting and list making of “The Best” is an entirely subjective matter. The way we know this is that there is no mathematics involved in creating the list, nor could there be since there is nothing of importance to measure in the transmission of sensory input from the mouth and nose to the brain that could tell us anything about the quality of a wine.

So, in a sense, the VinePair “Best of” project is rather political or, if you like, ideological. Including a wide variety of growing regions in their list of the 50 Best was clearly paramount. By my count, 35 different growing regions from around the world are represented on the list including Friuli, Santa Maria Valley, Seneca Lake (twice), Chile, The Dolomites, and others. If you are wondering, Sonoma Coast shows up most often in the list—5 times.

What’s interesting about this approach of placing diversity of location over quality is that the more well-known lists of the year’s best wines (The Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, Wine & Spirits Magazine, etc) have almost nothing in common with VinePair editors’ list project.

And in its own way, the VinePair list is a deliberate slap in the face and complete dismissal of the Best Of lists we are accustomed to seeing with their focus on Grand Cru, First Growths, Cult Cabs, top Champagne houses, and their disregard of price or accessibility. One list is elitist and dismissive of the notion of regional diversity. The other is hyper-conscious of the diversity of regions and variety (not to mention affordability).

Finally, it is important to point out that the VinePair list could never be compiled as it is if they simply intended to identify the “best” wines of 2024. To accomplish this, they would need to taste and evaluate wines blind, without knowledge of price or producer. They don’t. In fact, as they explain:

“We believe in tasting all products as our readers typically would: with full knowledge of the producer and — importantly — price. Our tastings are therefore not conducted blind.”

It’s worth noting that the only possible way to create a Best Of 2024 list that purposefully focuses on a diversity of regions and varietals is to NOT taste blind. I’m not sure why tasting wines the way their readers do is important. The fact is that the VinePair tasters are NOT in fact tasting the wines like their readers. They are taking a sip or two of each wine then likely spitting it out.

But this is really an aside. The really interesting thing is that VinePair has created something of a new kind of year-end Best Of list: It is not about identifying the best wines. It is a list that first and foremost seeks to highlight diversity and affordability. It’s not quite the Affirmative Action approach to Best Of lists. But it is the DEI of Best OF lists. One thing you have to admit upon looking this list over: you are being exposed to a great number of bottlings that you’ve never heard of before and should probably seek out.