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Welcome to our end of the year retrospective, review, and wrap for The Wine Pair Podcast! In this episode we review our highest and lowest rated wines of the year. Believe it or not, in 2023 we tasted and reviewed about 120 wines, and out of all of those wines, just a handful got ratings of 9 or 10, or got ratings of 4 or under.
If you are looking for a list of great wines to buy, or bad wines to avoid, this is the perfect episode for you!
Some fun things we found as we reviewed these wines. First, Joe tends to grade a bit harder on the lower end of wines than Carmela does. Not a surprise there since Carmela is the nice one!
Second, Carmela tends to rate white wines just a bit higher than Joe, and Joe tends to rate red wines just a bit higher than Carmela.
Third, our top rated wines are a good mix of red, white, rosé, and sparkling, and also a good mix of wines from around the world. We have wines in the tip top of our ratings from France, Spain, Italy, and the United States. No matter what wine you like, we think you’ll find one represented in our “best of” review.
And for our worst rated wines, well, they all happened to come from the state of California. Which is not a huge surprise because they make A LOT of wine in California, but also because we tend to find the style of California wine that makes it on the grocery store shelves lacking in subtlety and elegance. What we call “punch-you-in-the-face” wines.
Finally, we’ll tell you why we think our reviews are more useful and reliable than the 100 point professional ratings - and it’s mostly because we share with you when we like and don’t like a wine, and the pros do not!
Join us for a super fun ride, and we would love to hear what your favorite and least favorite wines were this year, too!
Contact The Wine Pair Podcast - we’d love to hear from you!
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Show Notes
Episode 103: The Best and Worst Rated Wines of 2023 00:00
Hello! And welcome to The Wine Pair Podcast. I’m Joe, your sommelier of reasonably priced wine, and I am doing this quick intro to the episode while Carmela works like crazy to get her Babycakes and Baby Bites ready for all of the Holiday orders.
Ok, a quick orientation for those of you who may be new to the podcast - in each episode what we usually do is we learn about, taste and give our honest review of three wines that are reasonably priced - meaning under $20 each - and should be easy for you to find, and as you would expect we talk about what foods to pair with that wine! And our podcast is made for people who want to learn more about wine, find new wines to enjoy, and just want someone to talk about wine in a fun way that regular people can understand and use in their daily lives. So, if that sounds like you, you are in the right place! And we are proud to say that we are recommended by the editors of Decanter Magazine who call us fun, irreverent, chatty, and entertaining
We are going to do something we have never done before - we are going to do a retrospective of the highest and lowest wines we tasted and reviewed this year. And, as I mentioned, Carmela is super busy making treats for people who ordered from her Babycakes business, so I will do a quick intro, and then we are going to review our top and bottom rated wines for 2023.
Believe it or not, Carmela and I tasted over 115 wines this year in the podcast, and only 11 of those had a rating of 9 or higher by one of us, and none of them got a unanimous 10. That’s on the good side. On the bad side, 5 wines had an average rating of 4 or lower. So, that means the vast majority of wines we have tasted and reviewed this year fell between an average rating of 5 and 7, which is what I would expect. And it probably means we sometimes give some wines the benefit of the doubt!
But that’s the nice thing about our podcast. Instead of just giving you the ratings of the top rated wines like Wine Enthusiast and Wine Spectator do, we rate all the wines we taste on our 10 point scale, and that means that you are going to get the good and the bad. So, unlike those other rating services that never tell you about wines under 88 or 90 points, when we taste wines, we give you the straight dope. I have a link to an article in our show notes that talks about how the 100 point rating scales work, and what’s interesting to me is that an 80 rated wine is considered to be a solid wine, but you almost never see a rating published below say 87.
So we think our rating scale is a little more honest because, again, we are going to give you the rating of any wine we taste on our show. Our rating scale goes from 1 to 10, there are no half points, and anything above 7 is a wine we think is solid that you should buy, and anything under 4 is a wine that we think is pretty much crap and not only should you not buy it, but you should pour it down the sink, and a 5 or 6 for us is a wine that you can drink, and it may not be great, but it is ok enough to drink.
So, for this episode, we are going to do a couple of things. First, we are going to list just the tip top of our highest and lowest rating wines, and then we are going to replay our tastings of our top 2 and our bottom 2 wines of the year so you can hear exactly what we thought . . .
But first . . . we have to do our shameless plug.
We want to thank you for listening to us and for supporting our show, and if you have not had the chance to do so yet, now would be the perfect time to subscribe to our podcast
And, another great way to support is to leave a nice rating and review on our website or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or other podcast service so we can continue to grow our listeners.
You can also follow us and see pictures of the wines we review and other fun pictures and maybe some AI picture on Instagram at thewinepairpodcast, and you can contact us on our website thewinepairpodcast.com, and you can sign up for our email newsletter there and get news and food and wine pairing ideas and more!
And, as we do every week, we’ll tell you someone we think you should tell about The Wine Pair Podcast. This week, we want you to tell anyone who is doing any sort of retrospective on the year that was 2023, and especially if they shared their Spotify Wrapped or something similar with you. If they do that, or ask you for yours, you just say - hey, you should listen to these guys do their own version of a wine Wrapped!
ARTICLES and LINKS
Topic: The Best and Worst Rated Wines of 2023 05:55
So, without too much further ado, let’s list our best and worst rated wines of 2023. And we are going to start with our lowest rated wines. All of these wines had at least one rating of 4 or below, and there were 5 wines that received that rating this year.
Staring our highest rated of the lowest wines, we’ll work our way down to the very worst.
- Our 5th worst wine came from our 2nd Amazon Cursive Wine review all the way back in January, Episode 62, and actually two wines on this “worst of” list come from Amazon and this episode. So that was a crappy tasting! I gave the wine a 4 rating and Carmela gave it a 6, and that was for the 2019 Cursive Chardonnay. (Cotton candy, grilled pineapple, kettle corn)
- Our 4th worst wine was another wine from that very same episode, Episode 62 Amazon Cursive Wine Review #2, and we both gave it a 4, and that was the 2019 Cursive Cabernet Sauvignon. (Sharp. Flabby and thin bodied. Not rich and bold. Astringent. Cough syrup from the 1980’s)
- Our 3rd worst wine was a recent one from our wines for tailgating episode, Episode 88, which consisted entirely of wines that come in cans, and I rated the wine a 2 while Carmela generously gave it a 5, and that was for the non-vintage Creamery Chardonnay in a can. Which I thought tasted like death. (Smelled like wine left too long in a wood box)
- In the runner-up spot for worst wine of 2023 was the 2019 Kaleidoscope Peite Sirah which we’ll listen to later which I gave a 3 and Carmela gave a 4 from Episode 82 (Hint: tasted like vinegar)
- And in last place was the 2019 7 Deadly Zins California Zinfandel which I gave a 2 and Carmela gave a generous 3, from Episode 83, and we’ll also listen to that one later. (Hint: taste was Super tart, bad, vinegary, potpourri spray)
It turns out that Carmela is just a nicer grader than I am, which is not a surprise.
And now let’s review our top rated wines of 2023. These all received at least one 9 rating from one of us, so it is hard to put them in a particular order, so we’ll just do them in tranches or buckets based on their average score, and then in alphabetical order within each of the tranches:
- With an average score of 8, a wine I gave a 9 and Carmela gave a 7 is the 2020 Ego Bodegas Goru Verde Monastrell from Episode 87 called WTF is Monastrell? And this Spanish wine was only $10.99 on wine.com. This is a red wine by the way. (like a Piedmont wine, subtle, austere, elegant)
- Another with an average score of 8, and again I gave a 9 and Carmela gave a 7, was a recent one, the 2021 Joseph Drouhin Beaujolais-Villages (also a red wine) from Episode 98, our Thanksgiving Episode: Bonkers for Beaujolais episode which I got for $15.99 from QFC (Kroger). And this Episode will show up again on this list! (taste more like a French Pinot Noir than a Beaujolais)
- The next several wines got an average score of 8.5, and again, these are just in alphabetical order, but the first is the 2021 BloodRoot Pinot Noir which I gave a 9 and Carmela gave an 8. This one came from our High QPR Pinot Noir #2 Episode, Episode 72, and I have to admit that this wine was $24.99, so a bit above the price point we aim for. (Australian red licorice, Cherry, nice finish, a kiss of oak, good balance, vanilla, smooth, nice acidity)
- The next wine came from our latest episode, number 102 where we went over wines for The Feast of the Seven Fishes and is called La Cappuccina Soave which is a great white wine and Carmela gave it a 9 and I gave it an 8. (very lemony, clean, acidic, crisp, crunchy, like a lemon candy)
- We’re starting to see a pattern arise around red wines and white wines.
- The next wine at this tranche is the 2021 Compton Family Wines Garden Series Rosé of Pinot Noir which I gave an 8 and Carmela gave a 9. This one came from Episode 73 which was our Wines to Celebrate Mom episode. (Tart, strawberry, raspberry, creamy, citrus, good acidity, menthol, rose petal, personality, body)
- Believe it or not, the next wine on our list came from Episode 84 which was a our Costco Kirkland Pinot Grigio Challenge, and we loved the 2022 Costco Kirkland Signature Grave Pinot Grigio, which sells for $4.99, and again Carmela gave it a 9 and I gave it an 8. (Lemony, apricot, peach, honeydew melon, honey, stone, very easy drinking, a summer wine)
- The next one on our list came from Episode 92 which was called WTF is Pét-Nat, and again, Carmlea gave the 2022 Entre Vinyes Oniric Pét-Nat, which is from Spain, a 9 and I gave it an 8. (Smell: Yeast, bread, Hefeweizen beer with lemon, citrus, apple, pineapple, beer-like smell, pear)
- The next on the list which came from the same Episode that our worst rated wine came from, Episode 83 which was called Is California Zinfandel Underrated? And I gave the 2019 Turley Juvenile Zinfandel a 9 and Carmela gave it an 8. (Taste: sweet red cherry, dark cherry, unripe cherry, spice and wood on the back, a bit of a punch-you-in-the-face wine, big)
- The last one at this tranche is the 2018 Villadoria Bricco Magno Langhe Nebbiolo which came from Episode 61 Italian Wine Adventure #5: Langhe Nebbiolo! I gave it a 9 and Carmela gave it an 8. (Wood, tobacco, tar, rich cherry smell, rose petals, licorice, cherry taste. Elegant. Depth. Subtle. Rich and smooth. Delicious.)
- And now we are onto our top rated wines of 2023 which we will replay for you in a few minutes. We both gave this white wine the 2021 Domaine Francis Blanchet Pouilly Fumé Cuvée Silice a rating of 9, and that came from Episode 68 WTF is Pouilly-Fumé? (Burnt match, fresh pineapple)
- And the top wine, which I gave a 10 and Carmela gave a 9 came from a very recent episode that has already shown up on this list, from our Bonkers for Beaujolais Episode, Episode 98 and it was the 2021 Domaine Dupeuble Pere et Fils Beaujolais. (Tastes like a much more expensive wine)
Alright, now that we have gone through the list, we will give a listen to our tasting and reviews of our top 2 and bottom 2 wines of the year!
Our Top 2 and Bottom 2 Wines of 2023 Pairing Tasting and Reviews 13:52
Here is our first of the best, and this was our second highest rated wine of 2023
Best Wine of 2023 #2
Wine: Domaine Francis Blanchet Pouilly Fumé Cuvée Silice
Region: France, Loire
Producer: Domaine Francis Blanchet
Year: 2021
Price: $24.99
Retailer: wine.com
Alcohol: 12.5%
Grapes: Sauvignon Blanc
Professional Rating:
What we tasted and smelled in this Domaine Francis Blanchet Pouilly Fumé Cuvée Silice:
- On the nose: Burnt match, tropical fruit, peach, stone fruit, apple, fruity, fresh pineapple
- In the mouth: Fruity, good acidity, clean, tart, stone, tropical fruit, some citrus, lemon peel, pineapple
Food to pair with this Domaine Francis Blanchet Pouilly Fumé Cuvée Silice: Fresh fish, lightly fried fish, spicy foods
As a reminder on our rating scale, we rate on a scale of 1-10, where 7 and above means that we would buy it, and 4 and below means that we are likely to pour it down the sink, and a 5 or 6 means we are likely to drink it and finish it, but we are probably not going to buy it.
Rating for this Domaine Francis Blanchet Pouilly Fumé Cuvée Silice:
Now we are going to go to our second worst rated wine of the year, from all the way back in July.
Worst Wine of 2023 #2
Wine: Kaleidoscope Petite Sirah
Region: California
Year: 2019
Price: $14.99
Retailer: Total Wine
Alcohol: 13.5%
Grapes: Petite Sirah
Professional Rating: WE 90 Best Buy (but not absolutely sure this rating is correct)
What we tasted and smelled in this Petite Sirah:
- On the nose: Smoke, sour, flowery, dirt, vegetable, grapey, pepper, sour orange, sour blood orange
- In the mouth: Sour, orange peel, weird. Not good. Hard to drink. Almost vinegar.
Food to pair with this Petite Sirah: Nothing. Would not pair with anything.
Kaleidoscope Petite Sirah Wine Rating:
And now, before we give you the best wine we tasted in 2023, we are going to share with you the lowest rated wine we tried this year, and it comes just one week later in July from the previous crappy wines.
Worst Wine of 2023 #1
Wine: 7 Deadly Zins Old Vine Zinfandel
Region: California, Lodi
Year: 2019
Price: $14.99
Retailer: QFC
Alcohol: 15%
Grapes: Zinfandel and touch of Petite Sirah
Professional Rating:
What we tasted and smelled in this Zinfandel:
- On the nose: Not much to the smell, raspberry, burnt match, rubbing alcohol, smells very tart, faint berry, potpourri spray
- In the mouth: Super tart, bad, vinegary, potpourri spray
Food to pair with this Zinfandel: Nothing.
7 Deadly Zins Wine Rating:
Now onto our best rated wine this year that came from a very recent episode, and without further ado, here we go.
Best Wine of 2023 #1
Wine: Domaine Dupeuble Pere et Fils Beaujolais
Region: France, Beaujolais
Year: 2021
Price: $20.99
Retailer: QFC
Alcohol: 12.5%
Grapes: Gamay
What we tasted and smelled in this Domaine Dupeuble Pere et Fils Beaujolais:
- On the nose: Spiced cherry, cinnamon and cherry, warm baking spices, clay, a bit of smoke, smells like Holiday, cinnamon candy, Hot Tamale candy, cinnamon bear candy
- In the mouth: Cinnamon, Big Red chewing gum, cherry, smoke, charred, rich and complex, a formal wine, menthol, pine tree.
How would this Domaine Dupeuble Pere et Fils Beaujolais pair with Thanksgiving dinner: Super versatile food wine, Would go great with Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, from turkey to Prime Rib. Beautiful on the table and in the glass. Tastes like a much more expensive wine. Good for Friendsgiving
Domaine Dupeuble Pere et Fils Beaujolais Wine Rating:
Outro and how to find The Wine Pair Podcast 38:05
So, it is just about time for us to go, but before we do, we want to thank you very much for listening to us - and if you haven’t done so yet, now would be the perfect time to subscribe to our podcast and also a fantastic time to leave us a nice rating and review on our website
We would also love to hear from you about a wine you would like us to taste and review. You can, leave a message for us on our website thewinepairpodcast.com and you can join our email newsletter there, too, or you can just email us at joe@thewinepairpodcast.com and tell us about a wine you are curious about, or curious what we think of it.
Alright, with that, we are going to sign off, so thanks again, and we will see you next time. And, as we say, life is short, so stop drinking shitty wine.