We couldn’t have done it without you.

No, really. We couldn’t have. Yes, we would have drunk wine and whiskey in 2024. But we wouldn’t have had the opportunities that come with being at The New Wine Review without the support of our readers, and the opportunities to find some the best things we drank in 2024.

These are our staffers’ and contributors' favorites from 2024. We toast you with them. 

Best Things I Drank in 2024: Jason Wilson

2021 Terroir al Límit “Les Manyes” 

As I wrote earlier in the year, Priorat is mostly known for its big, macho red wines. But the region does have a subtler side, and this one, by Terroir al Limit, was one of the most memorable things I drank in 2024. One of the most coveted bottles in Priorat, and the exemplar of the new wave. From 60-year-old vines of Garnacha Peluda (a variant meaning “hairy Grenache”) grown at more than 2,600 feet elevation. Unbelievably complex, with delicate, seamless layers of berry, rose, spice, herb, smoke, crushed stone, etched together by incredible freshness and tension. An extraordinary world-class red.

2021 Filipa Pato “Nossa Missão” 

Portuguese wines are trending, and I spent some quality time tasting and writing about Portugal’s Atlantic reds this year. This one, from top producer Filipa Pato, is extraordinary. From 130-year-old, pre-phylloxera Baga vineyards and aged 18 months in large neutral casks. Gorgeous, with a vibe like aged Bourgueil. Leafy, savory, and herbal with Cabernet Franc-like notes of tomato and black olive. Difficult to find, but worth checking with the importer for availability

2020 Artuke “La Condenada” 

It’s no secret that I love Rioja’s new wave, and I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time in the region in 2024. This bottle, from Artuke, was not only the best Rioja I tasted, but one of the top wines from anywhere I enjoyed. A field blend from a small parcel in a vineyard planted in 1920, this is one of the most coveted reds in Rioja, and a stunning example of the region’s new wave. Complex, intense, nuanced; by turns herbal, earthy, and ripe. Notes of blackberry and black cherry, with thrilling acidity and elegant tannins, and an incredibly long finish. Totally balanced and seamless, with a long life ahead of it. Not cheap, but a shockingly good value for one of the finest reds in the world. This will only get harder to find in years to come.

2021 Sottimano Pajoré Barbaresco 

Barolo bros, don’t worry: this Barbaresco is macho enough for you. I dove deep into Barbaresco this spring, and this bottle was my favorite. From 50- to 70-year-old vines and aged 24 months in large French oak barrels. More intense and full-bodied than the producer’s Basarin bottling, with aromas of violet, baking spice, and forest floor and flavors of raspberry, cherry, mint with an undercurrent of tobacco and salt.

2022 Enric Soler Espenyalluchs 

I’ve been banging the drum for Xarel·lo—made as a still wine instead of sparkling—for some time now. At this point, I believe Xarel·lo can take its place among the great white grapes of the world. This is one leans in a Loire Chenin Blanc direction. Barrel fermented, and aged on the lees for eight months. Gorgeous nose of honeysuckle, fresh herbs, yellow apple, waxy in the mouth with ripe pear and crushed stone on the finish. Beautiful.

2020 Dautel Forstberg Spätburgunder Grosses Gewächs 

Apparently I’ve written about Spätburgunder—German Pinot Noir—quite a bit this year. I wonder why more people haven’t gotten the memo. Dautel is one of Württemberg’s top red-wine producers, and this incredibly elegant and silky Spätburgunder delivers the goods. Savory, leafy aromas mingle with red fruit on the nose, and then comes the juicy, fresh black cherry and cranberry on the palate. Full of energy and balanced with serious minerality. With Burgundy prices at an all time high, this is world-class Pinot at a great price.

Best Things I Drank in 2024: Jon Fine

2018 Bartolo Mascarello Barolo

Because it is good to be proven wrong. People had told me that Barolos drink well younger, in an age of climate change. And I had told myself that I wasn’t interested in 2018s, given the then-atypical heat of that vintage year. But: an owner at a small restaurant in Piemonte assured me that this was ready to drink. Given a half hour in a decanter, it absolutely blossomed, giving all the elegance and roses and tar and dirt and silky beauty one wants from Barolo. And perhaps an object lesson in how great producers can make great wines in non-great vintages.

2019 Markus Altenburger Gritschenburg Alte Reben

Behold the majesty of old-vine Blaufränkisch, grown on limestone-rich soils in Burgenland, when farmed and vinified with great care. Incredibly purity and beauty and, for lack of a better word, completeness, along with ultra-fine tannins that are seductive beyond belief. And a very useful rejoinder to the kinds of old-school wine ideologues who somehow still have a hard time believing that truly great wine can only come from a few well-known regions. Not yet commercially available in the US but I’m told it will arrive soon; be prepared to pounce when it is, because I plan on buying an absolute fuck-ton of it. 

2006 Scott Paul La Paulée Willamette Valley Pinot Noir

Unquestionably the biggest upside surprise of the year. A bottle my wife, some friends, and I BYO’d to Portland’s estimable Davenport, and the one that convinced me that Oregon Pinot made by the right pair of hands can mature as beautifully and as gracefully and seamlessly as red Burgundy. And this from a bottle that was this now-defunct producer’s entry-level cuvée! Key fact: its winemaker is low-key Oregon superstar and big-time NWR fave Kelley Fox. 

2012 Domaine Pierre Gonon Saint-Joseph

Perhaps I’ve written about Gonon’s wines too much this year. In fairness, though, I’ve  talked about them even more. I’ve been lucky to have multiple bottles of the 2012 this year, and each has astonished. I’d like to say that it’s the essence of Syrah itself, but I don’t think that captures the ineffable beauty the Gonon brothers coax from this sometimes-underloved grape. Violets, olives, blackberry, utter harmony, swoon, marry me.   

2017 Cecile Tremblay Chambolle-Musigny Premier Cru Les Feusselottes
2022 Mugneret-Gibourg Ruchottes-Chambertin Grand Cru
2022 Domaine G. Roumier Chambolle-Musigny Premier Cru Las Cras
2022 Domaine G. Roumier Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru
2022 Domaine G. Roumier Chambolle-Musigny Premier Cru Les Amoureuses

God-tier red Burgundy experiences, all—and, alas, god-tier prices, all. 

Burgundy is a fickle beast. Burgundy so often disappoints. And great Burgundy is often insanely expensive. But when you taste something like these—wines that capture, and even  exceed, all of the romantic horseshit that people say about great wine in general and great Burgundy in particular—all of that falls away. A caveat: I have no idea how the Roumiers and the Mugneret-Gibourg would fare over the course of an entire evening, as I only had small tastes of each at Grand Cru Selections’ portfolio event in New York City in November. And I don’t expect I ever will, given the prices they command. What I do know is that I won’t forget the experience of tasting them. 

Honorable Mentions, in no particular order:

2018 Domaine L’Anglore Terre D’Ombre; 2019 Chanterêves Nuits-St.-Georges Premier Cru Les Damodes; 2015 Cuchet-Beliando Cornas; 2014 Benjamin Leroux Meursault Premier Cru Le Porusot; 2019 Ochota Barrels From The North Mourvèdre; 2013 Chave Hermitage; 2006 Ferrando Carema Etichetta Nera; 1991 Diamond Creek Volcanic Hill Cabernet Sauvignon; 2001 Emidio Pepe Montelpuciano D’Abruzzo; 2014 Giacomo Conterno Barbera D’Alba Vigna Ceretta; 2006 Thomas Pinot Noir; 2017 Hubert Lamy Chassagne-Montrachet Premier Cru Les Macherelles; 2019 Luke Lambert Yarra Valley Syrah; 2005 Vignobles Levet La Chavaroche Côte Rôtie; 2015 Sandlands Contra Costa Mataro; 2013 Stella di Campalto Amore Rosso di Montalcino; 2015 Sadie Family Mev Kirsten Chenin Blanc; 2017 Domaine Pierre Gonon Iles Feray; 2010 Domaine Pierre Gonon Saint-Joseph; 2017 Pacalet Nuits-St.-Georges.

Best Things I Drank in 2024: Sarah Parker Jang

NV Jacques Selosse Substance Champagne Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs

This spring my husband and I stopped for lunch at Anselme Selosse’s restaurant, located next door to the domaine in Avize. Here was a chance to try, right at its source, the most unique and polarizing bottle in the domaine’s range. It’s also one of the most expensive—but, you only live once, and we were in a celebratory mood. We let the wine unfold over the course of two hours. There were so many distinct layers in the glass, a new one surfacing with each swirl. Vinous, rich, with dried apricots, sea spray, honey, apple pie, dried rose petals, toast. A lingering note reminiscent of the sweet leather and vanilla scent of old library books. Love it or hate it (I’m in the former camp), it’s the apex of the oxidative style of Champagne, and an unforgettable experience for any bubblehead like me.

2021 Cidrerie de Verzy Cidre Sec

At one Champagne tasting this year, the pour that stuck in my mind was this cider, crafted by five of the most exciting grower-producers in the region: Antoine Bouvet, Adrien Renoir, Bertrand Lapie, Quentin Paillard, and Flavien Nowack. They source organic, biodynamic apples and pears from trees as old as 250 years in Champagne and Normandy. It’s made like a Champagne rather than a traditional cider, and it’s a joy to drink—aromatic, bone-dry, vibrant, and refreshing, with notes of ripe orchard and stone fruit, sweet spice, and wildflowers. There’s a movement of next-gen producers restoring historic orchards in and around Champagne and bringing their grower-producer sensibilities to bear on cidermaking. It’s an exciting development in a region that sometimes seems to have more inertia than others, and one that I’m eager to follow.

2019 Chartogne-Taillet Les Barres Champagne

Tasting through the entire Chartogne-Taillet range was a highlight of this year, and Les Barres—one of winemaker Alexandre Chartogne’s first single-vineyard Champagnes—was a standout. From ungrafted vines, on sandy soils in the village of Merfy. Bright citrus fruits with a floral edge and a tangerine juiciness; a savory, saline palate; and a silky mousse. It’s a testament to what the underdog Meunier grape can achieve under the terroir-focused approach of someone like Chartogne.  

2022 Bastian Wolber Laisse Tomber Volnay

There’s such stunning purity of fruit from this German-born new-wave Burgundy producer, who also has bottlings from Alsace, Beaujolais, and Germany. Wolber has worked at domaines like Leflaive and Bizot, and his brother Christoph is a winemaker at Wasenhaus, where Bastian vinified his first vintage. He sources organic and biodynamic négoce fruit from friends who are growers and labels it under Laisse Tomber. (It’s a reference to a skateboarding accident that forced him to drop out of a Ganevat internship.) This Volnay was silky, with fresh red and dark fruit, aromas of rose petals, sous bois, and lifted spice from whole-cluster fermentation. Pure pleasure.

2022 Chateau Simone Palette Rosé

People who dismiss rosé as unserious must never have tried this one. It was the best rosé I drank this year—or any other—and among the best wines of any hue that I tasted in ‘24. It’s a wine that has you daydreaming of the terroir: sun-baked rolling hills dotted with olive trees and fragrant scrub. Intense aromas and flavors of mint, violets, strawberry, rhubarb, black cherry, chocolate, sweet spice, with a finish that went on and on. It was powerful and full-bodied but still fresh and bright—a true balancing act.

Best Things I Drank in 2024: Susannah Skiver Barton

Duncan Taylor 1983 Port Ellen 40-Year-Old

I know this reads like a boast-post but I swear: drinking decades-old scotch from a legendary distillery is not a common thing for me. I’ve only had Port Ellen a couple other times. It’s getting increasingly scarce, as the last casks from the 80s are close to being too old. This one, though, is damn near perfect: thick with rancio and the lush tropical fruits of maturity, cloaked in salty smoke, mouthwatering and chewy. It’s a grande dame of a whisky, and it made me think about aging, and mortality, and how I participate in the passage of time.

Wild Turkey Generations

I was late to the game on this bourbon, as it came out in 2023 right after I had a baby. But maybe coming to it as a new parent made me appreciate it more—both because I’d been deprived of whiskey for so long, and because of what this bottle represents. The generations of the name refer to the three generations of Russells—Jimmy, Eddie, and Bruce—that worked side-by-side to create the bourbon. Sure, genes probably have very little to do with the ability to make great whiskey. But an unbroken chain of handing down tradition and expertise, and the closeness of familial relationships, definitely help. Here, they yielded a powerful bourbon that felt no need to flex its muscles, instead quietly allowing me to discover its full force of flavor: spiced black tea, cherry compote, orange oil, and earthy dark chocolate, with flawlessly integrated oak and leather.

Amrut Master Distiller’s Reserve Cask #4862

I’ve been an Amrut fan since the very first time I tasted it at Glasgow’s Whisky Festival in 2011, poured for me by Ashok Chokalingam. Back then, he was the distillery’s head of sales, and he can claim much of the credit for its early success on the global stage. Now, Chokalingam has added distilling to his duties, putting his name to releases like this one, a single cask exclusive to the U.S. market. It’s a pure joy to drink. Perfumy and colorful, with peach, lemon, and floral notes—yet grounded in warming oak and chewy chocolate, no doubt thanks to the stout cask used for finishing. Amrut rarely falters in offering top-class, extremely satisfying whisky. Under Chokalingam, that streak continues.

Best Things I Drank in 2024: Clara Dalzell

2020 Hubert Lignier Chambolle-Musigny Vieilles Vignes

Burgundy can be such a heartache—expensive and finicky. Which is why I was surprised at myself for falling so hard for this bottle, which I drank with my best meal of the year at Tjoget in Stockholm. I’ve never had a sub-par bottle of Lignier but this was truly lights out: supple, sexy, suave, perfumed, earthy, purple fruits, distant spices, and finesse encapsulated.

2016 Vilmart & Cie. Grand Cellier D’Or

This capped a raucous night out, which started with a torrential downpour and ended up with me floating in a glass of this. Vilmart is my Baby Krug—an under-the-radar family-owned house with 11 north-facing, contiguous hectares in the village of Rilly-la-Montagne. Along with Krug, it is one of the few estates still using barrels. After 10 months in wood and another 42 en tirage before disgorgement, tertiary flavors have developed—lightly toasted brioche buns, hazelnut, cream, preserved lemon—and its structure melds them into luxurious cohesion. 

Best Things I Drank in 2024: Jason Jacobeit

2021 Julien Brocard Chablis Vigne De La Boissonneuse

With Chablis, ‘entry level’ is hopelessly misleading,  as élévage—rather than terroir— is the crucial input.  A villages vineyard given 20 months aging in wood offers a far clearer and more attractive Chablisien profile than do Grand Crus cut expressively short by élévage too brief or steely.  

Raveneau, Dauvissat, and Tribut demonstrate this difference clearly, ‘entry level’ wines very much included. So do Julien Brocard’s. Here, as with other of Chablis' most expressive examples, cataloging specific flavors misses the point. The wine’s bright fruit is slicked with such saline intensity that grapes become merely a vehicle for maritime complexity. That it’s priced well below $50 has allowed me to open more bottles this year than I should comfortably admit, the most recent showed so much umami my Zalto seemed laced with miso.  

2000 Domaine Leroy Vosne-Romanée Premier Cru ‘Aux Brûlées’

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde reminds us that ‘Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.’ For all our professed terroir-centrism and vintage sensitivities, many of us ground our passion for wine similarly. “Wanna taste this Chambertin?” Depends. “Wanna taste this Swartland Chenin?” Again: depends. Because wines, too, are well made or poorly made. And the smallish number that are extraordinarily well made, wherever they emerge from, endure as our fiercest pleasures. Madame Leroy’s 2000 Vosne ‘Aux Brûlées,’ enjoyed over Austrian food earlier this year, touched the limits of artisanal winemaking. The wine's pure, lucid fruit and borderline psychedelic whole-cluster intensity completely hijacked that evening. This bottle was a touchstone for all the things I seek in Burgundy—hell, for all the things I seek in wine.

Best Things I Drank in 2024: Patrick Comiskey

NV Cayuse Vineyards 6,042 

At a Grenache festival in Walla Walla, Washington I had a multi-vintage Rocks District Grenache from Christophe Baron of Cayuse called 6,042. (It’s what you get when you add of 2013, 2014, and 2015.) Multi-vintage wines are a persnickety bunch, and using Grenache to make one seems foolhardy. It’s oxidative, sometimes volatile, sometimes just weird—not the sort of variety that likes to hang around in a barrel waiting to blend with future vintages. This wine, however, was as vibrant and pristine as if it had been bottled the day before, with scents of violets and thyme and cool forest air, a mild meaty note overlaying dark berry flavors. A stunner. 

2022 Junichi Fujita Juna 

For an upcoming feature for The New Wine Review, I recently tasted the inaugural releases by Junichi Fujita. Juna is a co-ferment from his estate vineyard, composed mostly of Pinot Noir, along with a bit of Pinot Gris, Aligoté, Chardonnay, Gamay Noir, and Pinot Meunier. The wine is, in every way, the sum of its parts—lean at first, with Pinot’s delicacy and light touch, scents of woodsmoke and spice. From there, though, the wine becomes furtive, as if it can only be viewed from a distance. I’ve had that sense of dislocation before; often in the presence of something great, a wine expressing itself as all potential, even as it’s wholly and utterly complete. Open nearly a week, it only became more alive and present. Hauntingly delicious.