2021 DWWA Best in Shows: Top 50 wines to try

Barossa’s ancient, varied soils and up-country, dry-land climate produce famously attractive, voluptuous Shiraz, and it was just such a wine which inched ahead of its Australian red-wine peers to merit a place in this year’s top 50 Best In Show. Dark black-purple in colour, the scents of warm, almost treacly bramble and damson fruits, tar, leather and summer heat itself make for a headily inviting combination. The wine is concentrated, spicy, deep and long, with more of that bramble and damson given limpid focus. The wine has a juicy acid balance, melting tannins and is sagely oaked: skilled marshalling of what are evidently very fine raw materials.

The role of Margaret River in helping define the expressive possibilities of Australian Chardonnay is a major one, and this profoundly maritime region with its amenable gravel and loam soils continues to make much of the pace in the Southern Hemisphere as a whole. This 2019 Reserve Chardonnay has scents of bergamot and lemon zest underwritten by a faint, subtle coffee cream. It is spotlessly clean, pure and fine-spun on the palate, with ample citrus and samphire freshness and a pungent finish: very much a Chardonnay for fish and seafood. Aesthetically speaking, too, it has much more in common with our other four Best In Show Chardonnay wines than you might imagine from a zone with the same heat summation figures as Napa: this is emphatically cool-climate in style.

This finely crafted wine from Beamsville Bench is unquestionably the fruitiest of our five Chardonnays -- but this is fruit Niagara-style, so don’t look for anything opulent or flamboyant. Think, instead, of the scent of cool northern orchards when the apples and pears begin to fall and lie in the grass and you crush rosehips and hawthorne berries underfoot -- and you’ll be there. On the palate, that seam of cool-fruited inspiration continues unabated in what is not only a complex Chardonnay but also a satisfying and utterly convincing one, as well as being a kind of benchmark for the Ontario style.

Our Chilean representative in the Best In Show selection may perhaps raise eyebrows -- but it shouldn’t, since the value is outstanding and it also underscores the revaluation of Chilean vine resources and terroir potential which is underway in the country. This blend of Cinsault, Pais and Carignan comes from Itata in the south of Chile, formerly a bulk-wine-growing region but now a source of some of the country’s most intriguing old-vine, dry-grown fruit. It’s dark in colour with warm, sweet, haunting and undemonstrative aromas; the palate is supple yet intense, concentrated and tenacious. Food-friendly, harmoniously ripe and naturally articulated, this is a great buy.

Our judges looked at three outstanding Languedoc reds in our Best In Show tasting, each very different from the other, but in the end this Terrasses du Larzac wine was the one which won through thanks to the way it seemed to sum up the appeal of its region. It’s dark in colour, and its aromas sketch out not just the stony, wild fruit typical of the Languedoc hills but also the scented plants (notably thyme and rosemary, but also cade, juniper, pine and sweet-scented greenbrier) which fill the garrigue scrublands and forests. After that aromatic treat, you’ll find a lively, even athletic wine with plenty of depth, energy and texture: truly a regional standard-bearer. In contrast to many ambitious Languedoc reds, oak is used sagely here.

Every year our judges confront the same difficulty when it comes to our cohort of outstanding Provence roses: should it be an example from Bandol (which, thanks to a sizeable Mourvedre component, will generally be structured and characterful) which represents the region in our top 50 Best in Show, or should it be a typical Cotes de Provence rose, where excellence is gauged by prettiness, understatement, delicacy and drinkability? Bandol has won out again this year, but you will find Cotes de Provence roses among our other Platinum and Gold Medal-winners. In truth this pale pink wine doesn’t lack prettiness of either colour or scent: it shimmers peachily on both fronts. In the mouth, by contrast, you’ll find plenty of almond marrow to take up the relay where the peaches end: creamy, long and fine.

When it comes to soft, sweet-fruited fragrance and tender flesh, few regions can rival the Southern Rhone at its best -- and that’s exactly what you’ll find in this great value Best In Show. The colours are black-purple, and bilberries, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and just about every other berry you can think of comes curling from the glass as you swirl, all freshly defined. The palate, too, is fruit-packed: brimful, overflowing, exuberant, exotic and life-enhancing. There are tannins, but they are soft too and almost an afterthought, and the juicy acidity is buried in the fruits. Enjoy this wine as soon as you can, and don’t even think about ageing it .. which would be to sacrifice its youthful appeal. Drink and buy more instead.

The pink wave sweeping the wine world at present hasn’t left Champagne behind -- but Champagne’s way with pink wine is as distinctive as the rest of its wine offer. You cannot make wines here which are vanishingly pale, petal-pretty and evanescent: there is just too much character, strike and drive on offer in Champagne’s raw materials. There are many great Champagne ripostes to the pink festival of restraint elsewhere, but this salmon-copper rose, with its cavalier autumn fruits and its sheer breadth and audacity of flavour, struck our judges as one of the most memorable. Long, bold flavours subside slowly, vinously and lingeringly in this great gastronomic rose wine.

A bottle or a glass of Pomerol should always be a treat -- and this one is. It’s still a dark black-purple in colour, as you’d expect from the supremely generous 2018 vintage, with svelte, sweetly defined fresh plum and black cherry fruits billowing from the glass. On the palate, it is concentrated and deep with ample black fruit flavours (more plum than cherry now), sustaining though unforced acidity and plenty of ripe skin tannins in soft, tongue-coating style. This amiable, affable and ample wine is open and welcoming already -- indeed it’s hard to resist. But there’d be no harm, either, in keeping it for up to a decade: there’s plenty in its rucksack, and much fun to be had along the way.

Blaye as a sub-region impressed our DWWA judges for the second year running, and this year the zone made it into our top 50 Best In Show with this excitingly deep flavoured 2018 blend of Merlot with 15 per cent Cabernet Sauvignon. This unoaked wine is a saturated deep purple-black in colour, with excitingly classical, generous, timeless aromas of warm blackcurrant and black cherry fruits and sweet, fresh plums. On the palate, it is every bit as generous as the colour and aroma suggests it will be: a torrent of pure fruit, soft tannins and juicy acidity. It is from Bordeaux, though, and there’s an Atlantic nuance and freshness coming from the soils and skies which brings its own nascent complexity to this exciting young wine.

The classic Blanc de Blancs Champagne our judges selected as Best In Show this year is, like their English sparkling wine choice, one that has been amply aged, and brims with the pleasures of age: a calm, steady mousse; refined aromas in which the fruit, bread and brioche of youth have given way to something deeper, stonier, more grounded in the natural world, the fruits calmed and sublimated, the acid profile rounded and smoothed while retaining all its energy. The 2008 vintage always promised much, though it was one which needed patience. That patience is amply rewarded in this pure, pristine, almost elemental wine.

The magnetic attractions of Condrieu have seen much planting of Viognier both elsewhere in France and around the world and yet, mysteriously, the sensual identity of wines grown on the original 202 ha of granite sands seems hard to duplicate. Aromatic richness is very much part of that -- yet what our judges liked about this Condrieu was its aromatic subtlety: the flower-strewn apricot fruit is there, yet it comes with a redeeming freshness. On the palate, the wine is rich and suggestive: oranges and ginger as well as apricot, yet there’s plenty of cleansing stone and refreshing bitter notes to keep the rich fruit on its toes.

This year marks the first appearance of a Savoyard Chignin Bergeron (and indeed any wine from Savoie) in a top 50 Best In Show selection, and a welcome one for this unique style of Roussanne. It’s mountain Roussanne -- but it’s also sun-trap Roussanne; the protected sites of this appellation mean that this wine is in fact a little higher in alcohol than any of our five Chardonnays. The nose charms with honeysuckle and nougatine, while the palate charms, too, with a cascade of honeyed almond flavours. Compare it with Roussanne from the Rhone, though, and you’ll also see a dancing mountain freshness apparent in the wine, and a tender, apricot-like acidity which brings ample lift and swirl.

Few of France’s great terroirs are as overlooked and as undervalued as Cahors, so our judges were happy to find a small set of wines from this beautiful, remote zone on the river Lot to scrutinise for our Best In Show selection. This was the one which stood out. It’s a saturated, dense black-purple in colour -- perhaps the most deeply coloured wine in our top 50, and a swirl leaves streaks on the glass. Fresh, vibrant tea-leaf and rose scents betray its Malbec origins, and there is ample green-pepper freshness in the fruits, too. On the palate, it is bright and high-focus, a wine of great intensity, depth and poise, fine-textured and long. The pristine fruits linger all the way through the finish, and it wears its oak very lightly: propitious vineyards, skilled viticulture and fine winemaking are all in evidence here.

The word ‘chameleon’ is often found in close proximity to the name ‘Chenin Blanc’ -- generally alluding to the fact that this polyvalent grape can perform as brilliantly in austerely dry guise as in extravagantly sweet, and with every flavour hue between, too. Not the least of the fascinations of this Savennieres-Roche Aux Moines, though, is the fact that it manages a chameleon performance in a single glass. It’s both fresh, pretty, honeyed and gently amiable -- and yet mysteriously smoky. Once in the mouth, and you’ll find it doughy, almost pastry-rich … yet insistently stony, dark, bitter-edged and almost troubling in its complexities. Pure, commanding and unique, its elevation to Best In Show was never in doubt.

It can be hard for Chablis Grand Cru to reach our top 50 Best In Show, as high-quality examples of this unique Chardonnay style tend to begin life inarticulately, saving their pleasures and allusions for later…when they are no longer commercially available. Happily, that’s not at all true for this fine Valmur: it smells alluringly sour and stony, recalling cold dug clay and plant sap rather than fruits, which is just what we want great Chablis to do. On the palate, it is tart and fresh … yet, as the wine finds the warmth of the tongue, full and sinewy too, with lots more sappiness and just a whisper of full-throttle fruit. You know there will be more to come, but this Grand Cru really does give you a peep of its future.

The 2019 vintage is as stylistically generous on the Cote de Beaune as it is on the Cote de Nuits, so the chance to compare this outstanding Premier Cru Clos des Epenots Pommard with its Vosne-Romanee Malconsorts peer was a treat for our judges. The aromas of the Clos des Epenots are very different to those of the Vosne. This wine’s red and black fruits are earth-sprinkled and sand-sweetened, and there are violet notes here too, plus a little subtle spice. On the palate, the wine is deep, firm, structured and authoritative; that spice seeps into the tannins, and that earthiness is back in the finish of this ample, almost savoury red burgundy. Another wine for the cellar for fortunate purchasers.

We were lucky enough to have a small but serious cohort of Vins Jaunes entered into this year’s Decanter World Wine Awards, and from the moment when our judges came across this supremely articulate yet typically refined Chateau-Chalon, it was hard to hold it back. If you’ve never tried Vin Jaune, you couldn’t do better than begin with this 2013. Pale but emphatically gold, it has aromas which evoke nuts, wild mushrooms, umami, yeast and cream, but in which some lingering sweetness of fruit survives, too (Savagnin for Vin Jaune is picked very ripe). It is deeply nutty and mushroomy on the palate, too; acid-structured as always (the hallmark difference between Vin Jaune and Fino Sherry or Manzanilla); long, taut, refined yet giving. And unique.

It’s always a treat to taste a wine from Vosne, but our judges look at such wines against their peers, so they have to be good to make progress … and very good indeed to reach Best In Show. This deep, youthful Premier Cru Malconsorts thrilled every judge who tried it. Not only does it encapsulate the appeal of its village with its velvet-textured opulence and ample raspberry and black-cherry fruits, but its fleet-footed vivacity and deft yet firm structure underlines what a great vintage 2019 is. The wine is delicious now, but the potential of this vineyard which sits alongside La Tache is such that those with a chance to cellar a few bottles for their later years won’t regret it.

For the uninitiated, Saperavi can be a fearsome challenge: it’s a grape variety prolific in everything, and young versions can have an almost thunderous force. Our judges loved this wine not least because the blend of Saperavi with Cabernet seemed signally successful and approachable, bringing out the best of both varieties without denaturing either. The qvevri fermentation, too, has left the wine vivid and almost trembling with youthful sweetness, yet behind that sweetness is ample freshness built on cool, woodland acidity and gently extracted though ample tannins. There is, too, a little Caucasian, silk-road spice haunting the fruits: complex and rewarding Georgian wine in the grand tradition.

Is it possible that Germany’s future might begin to look (as the world’s climate-change challenge grows) a little more burgundian? We have to ask the question this year, as the two German wines making it into our top 50 Best In Show selection are not classic Rieslings, but a Chardonnay from Baden and a Pinot from the Ahr. Look out for cream and lime on the nose and a fresh, pithy style on the palate of this close-textured, long-flavoured wine. There is remarkable restraint and refinement in this fine-dining white, and it’s a wine which anyone running a blind-tasting competition might want to reserve for a fiendishly difficult tie-breaking finale.

The Devonian slates of the Ahr valley have long been a favoured German spot for Spatburgunder (Pinot Noir), and this commanding red wine shows why. It’s deep in colour, with an arresting aromatic energy which suggests leaf and sap as much as fruit, with lots of elderberry and sloe lift; the oak influence is subtle and, while palpable, supports rather than overshadows the fruit. On the palate, that same energy is much in evidence: a drench of wild plums is now joined by redcurrants and nuanced by soft tannins which slowly fade towards a finish of sap and pepper. Although the acidity is structuring, it is soft and ripe, almost juicy. This harmonious and beautifully vinified wine drinks very well now but doubtless has more in store.

If you follow our Best In Show selection every year, you will already be familiar with the extraordinary Assyrtiko-based wines of Santorini, combining almost piercing varietal style with some of the most marked terroir-derived characters you will find anywhere: repeated winners in the past. Now, meet something different: a single-vineyard Santorini with more maturity of fruit, longer ageing and the mellower, less reductive impact which amphora can bring in place of stainless steel. Muted lemon and green-olive scents mingle with that warm strangeness which seems to derive from the island’s pumice and ash soils; on the palate, the wine is concentrated, rich, arresting…and dripping with those same flavours of lemon and green olive, and that a bitter stony warmth.

Those who remember how thinly disappointing many Bull’s Blood wines of the past were will be shocked to discover how deep and reassuringly bull-like this blend of Kekfrankos with Merlot and the two Cabernets is. The intense fruits have been harvested at the cusp of ripeness, then oak-aged with enough sensitivity to ensure that the dark urgency of the black fruits emerges limpidly and clearly, pointed up with a little leafy freshness. On the palate, this is clearly a young wine with a future: deep, dark, dense, fine-sewn and detailed, with ample juicy poise and incipient structure alike. The finishing extracts are very promising, too. The bull is back.

The fact that Italy has few whites capable of matching the renown of its reds has often been remarked though never satisfactorily explained. Assuming that our Best In Show selection this year is diagnostic, that may be about to change: two Italian whites made it into this year’s selection of top 50 DWWA wines. This first is this complex blend of Fiuliano (known elsewhere as Sauvignon Vert or Sauvignonasse, and never so successful as here in Collio and over the border in Slovenia) with Malvasia Istriana (a great grape in Croatia, too) and the singular, always memorable Ribolla Gialla. It’s green gold in colour, with compellingly creamy yet spring-fresh scents over subtle grapefruit and citrus zest. On the palate, this is a richly dry, alluringly sappy wine with ample mouth-filling intensity, length and textural presence. Very fine -- and wholly original.

Trebbiano (or Ugni Blanc) has two iterations which suggest that it is one of the world’s fine-wine varieties, though both involve transformations so dramatic as to merit the term metamorphosis. Cognac is one -- and Vin Santo the other. The glowing amber wine smells of crystallised fruits, sweet tobacco and warm attics in which fruit is stored -- appropriately enough, since that is how the grapes which make this wine are treated prior to fermentation. On the palate, it is voluptuously sweet and multi-dimensioned, the balance coming from its many aromatic allusions (more crystallised fruit and dried flowers, as well as barleysugar, ginger spice and buttered almonds) and from its subtle oxidative complexities rather than from acidity. Its glycerous texture, volume and wealth give it an easy sippability…with or without a cantucci biscuit to dip as you go.

The name Timorasso often crops up when wine lovers speculate about what Italy’s future great whites might be. This straw yellow wine reveals itself shyly at first -- quiet summer-meadow scents and flavours which mingle fresh apple and bitter lemon. The more time you spend with the wine, though, the more conscious of its qualities you become. There are warmer, almost honeyed notes to the aroma, as well as the warmth of harvested grain. The palate, too, is backed by ample volume, width, dry depths and layered resource: it’s an archetypical ‘slow wine’. By the end, we all wanted more. And we might get it: Derthona (the Roman name for Tortona) has no legal status at present, but may eventually come to signify pure Timorasso from this indigenous variety’s Piemontese heartland.

The Piedirosso variety is a Vesuvian native -- and a perfect example of the many indigenous varieties in Europe previously dismissed for being over-light or inadequately showy, but which are now finding favour, thanks to a global wine aesthetic which increasingly values digestibility, nuance, freshness and climatic aptitude. This dark red wine is indeed fresh, with early autumn fruits whose natural sweetness almost seems to have a balsamic note. It’s pure and lively on the palate with a cascade of tumbling acidity and fine-grained tannins: an energetic, even athletic reading of Campania’s volcanic soils and bright light. The amphora ageing helps shape and refine the purity still further, and those balsamic notes continue to provide interest all the way to the clean, deft, sappy finish.

It would be hard to find a greater red-wine contrast to the Catena Zapata Nicasia Malbec than this supremely elegant, fragrant and restrained Barolo from the fine 2016 vintage. It is a translucent pale garnet in colour, with refined, harmonious aromas of sweet confit fruits and dried flowers. On the tongue, it is silky, restrained, quiet, unshowy and classical: a stealthy, understated expression of these hills and their marl soils. Give it a little time, though, and you’ll find the warmth of the vintage articulated through the soft cathedral glow of the fruits, the roundness and lyricism of its acidity, and the aromatic savouriness of its finish. Quietly splendid.

The creation of the Prosecco Superiore di Conegliano-Valdobbiadene DOCG in 2009 and, subsequently, the official identification of 43 hillside sites or ‘Rive’ in 2019 has led to a surge in Prosecco quality...to accompany this wine’s surge in global popularity. Our judges found much to like from this region this year, as a glance at the Gold and Platinum medals will show, and it was in the end a wine from those distinctive and challenging Trevisano hills, and specifically the Rive of Vidor, which won its place in our top 50 Best In Show selection. You’ll find plenty of classically floral charm in its aromas but not just that; there’s a multi-faceted spring-leaf freshness, too, which brings the wine extra depth and impact. It’s made in the Extra Dry style preferred locally, so the palate is rounded and toothsome -- but very pure, remaining fresh, graceful and scented until you’ve drained and swallowed the last drop.

We were lucky enough to have a splendid entry from Brunello di Montalcino this year, as this zone’s other Gold and Platinum medals testify, drawing on both the superb 2015 (Reserva) and 2016 vintages. Much effort went into scrutinising these wines to find a worthy candidate for our Best In Show collection -- and here it is. Translucent black-red in colour, shading to a glowing garnet rim, with refined, artfully composed scents of subdued berry fruits, warm summer forest, dried mushrooms and soft suede. The wine is intense, deep, perfectly pitched in structural terms between lively, well-rounded acidity and brisk, sober tannins: a dignified, grave yet rewarding wine for a fine dinner. It is fully accessible now, yet the quality of its fruit and its balance suggest many years’ ageing potential, too.

Sauvignon Blanc and latterly Pinot Noir have made much of the running for New Zealand, but the nation’s Chardonnay has been quietly building its successes down the years, and it’s not unusual to hear wine trade insiders confess that it is, in the end, their favourite Kiwi variety. This pure, restrained example from Nelson on the tip of the South Island is fresh and percussive on the nose, with a struck match or flintlock character that is almost more reminiscent of the Loire than of Burgundy. It’s the leanest and coolest of all of our Chardonnay quintet with some salt and chalk dust notes misting the pastel-drawn apple and pear fruits; look out for a nori seaweed finish, too.

There’s sensational value to be had in this wine for fans of Dao -- though those who aren’t yet familiar with this granite-soiled zone of Northern Portugal should know that its pleasures are as much stern as playful. It’s dark black-purple in colour, with scents in which the sweet plummy freshness of youth meets something a little earthier and more brooding. The flavours, too, are neatly poised between sweet youth, searching acidity and intrinsic depth and extract, though hardness is deftly avoided here by wealth of fruit. The ensemble is hugely characterful, tight-sewn and deep; it’s a wine for food and for winter’s nights; and it would age very well for a few more years: true wine-lover’s wine.

This alluring Verdelho, now with a vital two decades of maturity under its belt, is a translucent walnut in colour. The classic Madeira ageing process (which involves both heat and air) has left the wine aromatically glittering and multi-faceted: sweet and faintly smoky yet tangy with apple and grape fruits and decked with toffee, caramel, meat bouillon and mushroom. On the palate, this Verdelho is almost surprisingly dry after the sweet promise of the aromas, fresh with yet more apple and grape, and clean-finishing thanks to the pungent, sweeping acidity characteristic of all of the island’s wines. A toothsome mid-morning or mid-afternoon treat … and no hurry to finish the bottle, either.

With two wines in our top 50 Best In Show, Alvarinho/Albarino is one of this year’s champion grape varieties. The hallmark of a great grape variety, though, resembles that of a great actor: the ability to subsume its own personality inside that of the place (or the character) it is representing or portraying. Compare this (our first ever Best In Show Vinho Verde) with its Galician peer, and you will see a clear difference. This Portuguese wine is much quieter aromatically -- but haunting and tenacious, with hints of linden blossom and wet stone. It’s concentrated, cool, sheer, tongue-freshening … yet tenacious once again, with the presence and force of character which typifies its Moncao e Melgaco origins. That impression of a cool, wet granite landscape somehow conveyed by the wine lingers all the way through the long finish.

South African Cabernet Sauvignon is always a hotly fought category in the Decanter World Wine Awards, and this year was no exception. The wine which emerged with the laurel wreath and a spot in our top 50 Best In Show is one of the most remotely sited in the country, hidden away in the high Cederberg. It’s tempting to see a mountain purity in this dark wine, and the altitude can surely be read in the freshness of its blackcurrant fruits and their near-leafy charm. Those fruits drive through the palate with remarkable purity, length and, once again, freshness; it carries its alcohol with ease; and the finish is clean and bright. The tannins are soft, almost hidden behind the acidity, but they are there to bring a touch of cleansing bitterness which refreshes further.

The third of this year’s trio of great Catalan reds is no less deep in colour than our two Priorat wines, but has a very different aromatic spectrum. You sense that we are no longer in a stony wilderness, but in a landscape where nature is a little more fecund: the warmth of the fruits is softer, without sourness or pronounced sweetness, and there are perfumed Mediterranean scrub herbs in evidence too. This wine, though, is no less intense in the mouth than its two peers; indeed if anything more so still, with huge density and amplitude of fruit, aroma-saturated acidity, plentiful fine tannins and almost vermouth-like levels of suggested herbs and scrub plants. This is a commanding and assured Catalan red with two decades of profitable ageing ahead of it.

There is yet more impressive Iberian Best In Show value from this Pago wine, the first in Aragon: Ayles, sited near to Zaragoza. It’s a young blend of Garnacha and Tempranillo with a little Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, and stood out for successive panels of judges thanks to its generosity, poise and charm. Dark black-red in colour, its sweet, pure black-cherry and plum fruits waft alluringly from the glass. The concentration is remarkable for this price bracket, and the combination of indigenous varieties with a seasoning of Bordeaux favourites brings the wine a complexity which almost comes as a surprise after its aromatic sweetness. Its a wine from evidently propitious vineyards -- about which we will surely hear more in future.

Anyone who has ever seen photographs of the steep slopes of Ribeira Sacra will wonder how it is possible to produce a wine like this in our Value category -- but here it is, dark, fresh and thrillingly aromatic from first sniff to last swallow. This limpid, unoaked wine is made from the Mencia grape variety (known as Jaen in Portugal) plus a little Garnacha and Souson, and the emphasis is on its sloe, bramble and damson fruits in all their primary glory, almost as if it had been run from the vats just a week or two earlier. The palate is soft-textured, mouth-filling, exuberant and comely, structured more prominently by acidity than tannin, though that acidity is sweet and juicy in its own right. There is nothing at all sharp or hard about this tender, almost lip-smacking red … yet the variety itself, and the legacy of its austere, granite-soiled origins, somehow contrive to stop the wine tasting simple.

Not to be outdone by Brunello di Montalcino, the wine producers of Priorat dazzled our judges with their entry this year, and two wines emerged of such distinction that we felt compelled to include both in our top 50 Best in Show. This blend of Carinena with Grenache is dark red in colour, and smells of black fruits macerated with liquorice, menthol and winter spices like clove and mace -- though these are subtle and not crassly drawn allusions. The wine is not at all a blockbuster in style but trim and poised if muscular, with a lively seam of Carinena acidity to keep it fresh. The texture, perhaps, is its greatest distinction: seemingly a combination both of fine-milled grapeskin (fruited) tannins and other dryer tannins which almost seem to suggest powdered stone. Assured, long-flavoured wine from a great (and spectacular) zone.

There is no pleasure in wine quite like a Rioja Gran Reserva: the sense of ease and comfort as you sniff the languid, articulate, open-pored wine, and still more as you bathe your tongue in its gentle, mellow, luxurious fruits, is peerless. Here’s a fine example. It’s still dark, despite the seventeen years since its grapes ripened, and it smells of plush, rich, almost smoky fruits, warm timber, dried mushrooms, tobacco leaf and cedar boxes. The palate is rich, soft, open and easy, yet packed with fruited intensity, too. The minority Graciano component brings balancing acidity and there are deft tannins, too, though you might not notice them, so deeply are they buried in the time-honoured fruits.

The second Priorat to impress our judges convincingly enough to win inclusion in our top 50 Best In Show is a pure Carinyena…and surely makes a case for this schist-soiled region in Catalonia to be considered the pre-eminent global terroir for this much-maligned variety. This four-year-old wine is still dark black-purple in colour, with typically arresting sour-sweet Carinyena fruits lifting from the glass and evoking a wilderness landscape by their very wildness, as if pounded with stems on stones. The wine is almost medicinally intense in the mouth and once again offers a striking tutorial in the beauty of mingling sour and sweet; there is ample fine-grained tannic texture, and sweeping raptor-like acidity. It might all lack harmony -- but it doesn’t: the overall effect in the mouth is shapely, assured. Fine wine in dramatic style.

One glance at this Amontillado, with its deep walnut hue and amber glints, will tell you that this is not just an old wine but an ancient one. So, too, does its powerful engine of aroma, which seems to fill a room within minutes of pouring. Its aromatic allusions recall raisin and hessian, nuts, ham and bacon, dried apricots and peaches, apples and lemons, library dust and antique leather, moist liquorice and camphor…and much else. All you need is time to pick the analogies out. That aromatic intensity is matched on the palate with a wine of deep-diving force and almost textural levels of extract, just saved from austerity by those prodigiously aromatic fruits. A small glass of this distinguished vinous antique will provide hours of happy sipping.

There’s no mistaking the origins of this hugely characterful white wine: it sings, shouts and dances white Rioja, in time-honoured guise. The honey-gold colour alerts you to the wine’s two unhurried years in wood -- and so do its aromas, which come storming out of the glass in a gratifying shower of vanilla, toast, cream, butter, honey, melon and quince. It’s complete, even extravagant in the mouth, with more dripping layers of wood, cool fruits and subtle oxidative complexities -- which time is beginning to mesh and meld, though you’d be welcome to carry on this work in your own cellar, too. It would accompany food very well -- despite being a meal in its own right. Let’s hear it for tradition.

This wine is the first of no fewer than six Value wines to make it into this year’s top 50 selection, having impressed at the four different stages of scrutiny for its fragrance and its vivacity, its lightness and its elegance, its pungency and its pithiness. This variety’s home is around the northwestern tip of Iberia, though the Portuguese Minho versions are subtly different to those of Galicia. In its exuberance, charm and evident seafood-friendliness, this is a perfect example of the latter. Look out for scents of green apple, quince and grapefruit, while the flavours suggest not just citrus fruits but their peels and skins too. It retains all that aromatic force to the last drop, and leaves the mouth still cleaner than it found it.

Heida is the name used in the high Valais (or Wallis) for Savagnin, and our judges were very impressed by the range and expressive uniqueness of Swiss Savagnin this year, as you can see from other Swiss top medal-winners. The variety is often made with some residual sweetness in Switzerland, and stylistically speaking it forms a kind of missing link between North Italian Traminer wines and the much dryer and less aromatic Savaganins vinified from Jura’s cold clays. Don’t be put off by the fact that this is an oaked example, as the oaking is subtle and the delicate Heida fragrance survives. On the palate, too, this is a refreshingly aromatic yet full-flavoured wine, striking and singular: a horn sounding in the clear Alpine air.

The drama and intensity of great traditional-method English sparkling wines is now widely recognised. What English wine creators are just beginning to grasp, though, is just how propitious their fine sparkling wines are for extended ageing, in large part due to the extraordinary, flavour-saturated acid profiles bequeathed by the long, luminous yet always fretful English summers. The aromas of this outstanding 2011 Kentish wine are expressive, harmonious and refined after a decade of slow maturation -- all orchard fruits, wet stone and damp woodland. The wine is deep, intense and searching, with a driving acid core which in turn grows resonantly aromatic as the wine and its fine foam subside on your tongue. Huge character here; time has brought finesse.

For the second year running, it’s an Oak Knoll Cabernet which has carried the Best In Show torch for the Napa, underlining the fact that this spot in the Valley seems to be ideal for mingling Napa’s diagnostic generosity and depth with an expressive finesse and an approachability which both appeals to our judges and chimes with the wine world’s zeitgeist. The wine is still dark black-purple, and the aromatic currant and berry fruits are blue, tender and enticing, with skilled and seamless oak integration. On the palate, the wine has weight and depth -- but what you really notice in this 2018 vintage is its purity and inner energy; the weight and depth follow on after, but don’t overwhelm from the start. The seamless integration of acidity and brisk tannin, too, is another mouthwatering hallmark -- of skilled winemaking, or the place? Who’s to say?