25. Chateau Ste. Michelle & Dr. Loosen 2012 Eroica Gold, Columbia Valley, $28
Bob Bertheau, Wendy Stuckey and German icon Ernst Loosen take Eroica to the next level with this new off-dry luxury Riesling. For the debut vintage, Viewcrest Vineyard west of Benton City, Wash., earns most of the spotlight as the largest contributor, accounting for 62% of the final cut. The 30-year-old estate Horse Heaven Vineyard near Paterson supplied the rest. Alluring aromas include orange marmalade, dried apricot, Honeycrisp apple, Anjou pear, dried herbs and a contrail of petrol. What’s in store are beautiful apricot, more pear, baked apple and sweet orange flavors. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect is the adroit delivery of acidity, which dials down the listed residual sugar of 7.5% to what could be perceived as 2%. And enjoy the lingering hint of tangerine in the farewell. Ste. Michelle Wine Estates’ culinary team suggests serving this with crab, curries, scallops and Asian-influenced fare.
Production: 2,500 cases
Alcohol: 10%
Lists such as this are nice. But I content that wines with a production of less then 250 cases should not be included. There are wines here with microscopic production levels. That just amounts to teasing the vast majority of the readers.
Jim,
A valid point. I would contend that highlighting even small-production wines gives wine lovers an idea about what wineries to visit or wines to try.
Additionally, this is a bit of a slippery slope. Do we also exclude wines based on price point because they are accessible primarily to those only able to afford them?
We went into this with the thought of picking out the very best wines we tasted in 2013. During the process, we didn’t look at price point or production level. As a result, we also ended up with a lot of wines in which tens of thousands of cases were produced (in addition to small-production wines).