How would you feel if something made famous in your own hometown was copied by others elsewhere and they turned out to be even better at it than you?
Imagine how galling it must be for Bordeaux producers, the very people who invented the world's most popular wine style – the波尔多blend– only to see the rest of the world take it up enthusiastically and, in one region in particular, with the sort of phenomenal success that has left波尔多's own wines bobbing in its wake.
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当然,当有人点击成功的秘诀s, others will always follow, but the frustration must be acute, given that Bordeaux had ruled the roost for so long. For more than 200 years, the Bordelais had the field to themselves. Sure, the Burgundians laid their claims to making the world's best wines, too, but Bordeaux, happily situated on the coast, managed to ship its wines in greater quantities, seducing the markets of old Europe.
In those days, of course, what Europe was doing was soon being copied by countries overseas, mostly as a result of colonization. Transplanted English gentlemen in Australia wanted to drink Claret, so Australian winemakers tried to replicate it. Similarly Spanish nobles who had settled in Spain's New World colonies wanted wines that reminded them of the grandeur of their ancestral continent.
Even the United States, an independent nation, had strong cultural ties with France and more than a few Francophone communities within its borders, so it was only natural that American winemakers would also look to base their red wines on the ones that had become a global benchmark.
Once Napa got to grips with the winemaking, it wasn't long before it was making waves in France with its wines – the Judgment of Paris saw to that.
Since then, US reds have won favor with critics across the world, to the extent that they have outstripped the very models they set out to emulate, as you can see from the list below. The list is made up of the 10 Bordeaux blends that global critics rate the best in the world and one thing will become abundantly clear.
First, let's look at how we assemble these lists. You'll notice on some of the lists that the wines do not appear to be ranked in numerical order, according to scores, but trust us, they are. For example, the Château Ausone is ranked ahead of the Colgin Estate Red, despite an ostensibly lower score. These apparent anomalies occur because we weight the aggregated critic score according to how many scores each wine has received. So, a wine with an aggregated score of 95 points across 100 reviews will be rated higher than one with a score of 95 across 50 reviews. Similarly, wines with an ostensibly higher score across a lower number of reviews will not be ranked as high.
And finally, we have added more critics in the last 12 months, so this year's "best of" series will be more comprehensive than ever.
The World's Best Bordeaux Blends on Wine-Searcher:| Wine Name | Score | Ave Price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abreu Vineyard Thorevilos, Napa Valley | 97 | $613 | |
| Harlan Estate, Napa Valley | 96 | $1415 | |
| Realm Cellars The Absurd Proprietary Red, Napa Valley | 96 | $1200 | |
| Sloan Proprietary Red, Rutherford | 96 | $660 | |
| Château Ausone, Saint-Émilion | 95 | $802 | |
| Colgin Cellars IX Estate Red, Napa Valley | 96 | $601 | |
| Château Margaux, Margaux | 95 | $799 | |
| Château Mouton Rothschild, Pauillac | 95 | $744 | |
| Abreu Vineyard Cappella Proprietary Red, Napa Valley | 96 | $556 | |
| Château Haut-Brion, Pessac-Léognan | 95 | $682 |
The Napa takeover looks pretty compelling, doesn't it? Six of the top 10 from Napa, and four of the top five. When we ran this listlast year, it was a 50-50 split, with three US wines in the top five.
What is possibly most surprising, however, is the fact that the top Bordeaux wine is from the Right Bank, which has traditionally been seen as less august than the feted Left Bank wines. The first of the First Growths only arrives in seventh place, for goodness' sake. Either way, it's going to be interesting to see how this all pans out next year.
It's also interesting to see how Bordeaux's attitude to Napa has changed in the past 45 years or so. Once, French looked upon the US in much the same way that US consumers – and manufacturers – looked at goods being produced in Japan in the postwar period. To the US, Japanese goods were a punchline rather than a sign of things to come.
And we all know how that played out, don't we?
