Only the best: 12 Outstanding Northwest wines

We taste and judge about 5,000 wines per year – all blind, meaning we don’t know who the producer is until we are finished evaluating the wine.

We take this extra step to ensure we aren’t influenced by a wine’s price, label or whether or not we like the winemaker. As a result, only about one out of every 10 wines we taste earns our top “Outstanding” rating.

We’ve used this system since the late 1990s, and it has worked well for us, the wineries and consumers.

Here are the 12 best wines we’ve tasted in recent weeks, with 11 of them from Washington and one from Oregon. All of these happen to be made in small amounts, so look for them at your favorite wine merchant or contact the wineries directly.

Cheers!