There are scents and flavors that exist only in wine, combinations that come together nowhere else in the world. At W&S, we seek them out. Remember the ones we’ve found before. Get excited when we find something new.
This issue is all about those wines, the kind that can’t be reproduced in a lab or grown anywhere other than the region or vineyard where they do. Perfumers are paid millions of dollars to create a scent. These wines do it naturally, helped along by the vines, the geological history and the climate of the place where they grow, as well as the people who shepherd the grapes through their transformation.
There’s a lot of natural wine that gets away, hijacked by microbes or chemical reactions. And there are plenty of commercial wines that are perfectly delicious, but don’t really have anything interesting to say. Financial opportunities abound in that particular field, using technology not only to process the wine, but to learn what will most appeal to a group of drinkers.
Great wine is more analog than that. Its greatness comes about through the particular conditions that allowed it to taste the way it does and the people who dedicate themselves to allowing it to happen. This issue is full of such wines and the stories of the people behind them.
We give you notes on the 100 wines from all corners of the earth that rocked our world last year, as well as tips on 100 wines that caught us by surprise with their delicious flavors and textures at prices far below their neighbors’. And we profile 100 growers and winemakers whose work impressed us consistently over the past year in our blind tastings.
We dedicate this issue to all of you, who, like us, love sharing great wine.
This story appears in the print issue of Winter 2018.
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