Top 200 wines of the year 2024, part one - 93 points first tranche

Happy new year - may your 2025 be healthy, safe and free - get those three right and the happiness may follow 

It has been another super cali fragilistic expialidocious year of wine drinking and I count myself extremely fortunate to drink as well as I do, similar to - or even better than - previous years. 

For those of you interested in statistics in my top 200 wines in 2024 33%, or one third, were from Bordeaux, 28% from Piedmont, 17% from Burgundy, nearly 7% from Northern Rhone and nearly 9% including Southern Rhone, 4% from Champagne, 3% from Tuscany 2 1/2% from California, 1 1/2% from Australia, 1% each from Loire and Spain, and 1/2% (one bottle each) from England, Greece and South Africa.  

In this list of 200 top wines I rationed out some producers' that appeared frequently this year or have appeared frequently in previous years' lists. These include Yquem 1990 (95), Mouton 1996 (95) and Ducrus 2016 and 1995 (95 and 94 respectively), and also a few 93 and 94 pointers from the Rousseau and Meo Camuzet dinners we had in May and June. Both of these esteemed producers are otherwise well represented in the top 200. 

I don't consider myself to be a generous scorer, but neither am I stingy. These days, based on my scoring, 90-92 is generally the modal, median and mean score of the kind of stuff I drink, or taste (I gave up on pushing an alternative scoring system based on 80-100 with 90 being zero, plus or minus, too hard for people to understand, and let's just accept what is the accepted norm).

The point being is that for a wine to merit 93 points, it has to be pretty good. 

But this is where I start my top 200, at this point point. 

Part one: 93 point wines, first tranche, 200-150 

In this list of generally excellent wines some performed commendably well and above my expectations, while others performed about how you would expect them too.

In the former category I would include the #200 a fully mature delightful PdB when no single crus were made, and three standout clarets: #196, #194 and #191. Other over achievers included the marvellous Gianluca Colombo wines - #193, #190 and #161, and from elsewhere #170 the only ESW on the list and #159, #153 and #151 - my wine-pages sweet wine nomination.

In the latter category, performing as one would expect, you would have wines like #185, #184, #183, #178, #176, #174, #168 and #157.