00 Andrew Will, Pepperbridge Valley Merlot

Chris and Annie Camarda at Andrew Will have mastered merlot. The 00 Pepperbridge is a model for all American producers. It's an opulent and hedonistic wine -- the kind you'd make sure to pronounce MAHRRR-lo -- that could just as well find its place among barrels in St. Emilion. White pepper and fleshy fruit open to blueberries draped in chiffon and dragged in the mud.

05 Magnificent Wine Company, Columbia Valley House Wine

Man, the House Wine has become such a commodity. What was an unbelievable bargain has "matured" to become just another everyday table wine. A good one, mind you, but nothing like the ones of a few years ago, which gave every northwest cabernet at three times the price a run for the money (Andrew Will, Walla Walla, the list goes on). Now, its competition is more in the class of cheap Spanish garnacha and monastrell--grapey enough to keep everyone happy, with the trademark breadcrumb-like tannin (not too dry, but with enough grip to make you think it's a serious wine), and nothing really serious going on. Which is maybe what this wine should have been in the first place--still every bit worth buying as it was with the 2002--but we were spoiled by those early Charlie Smith-driven vintages that gave an entire generation of cheap wine drinkers a true taste of the power and sophistication of New World wine fornenst California's overpriced reds. So be it. We had our fun. And now we get what we deserve--a ripe, tasty red with no apparent flaws.

00 Mile de Noyers, Chablis Premier Cru Les Lys Vineyard

Maybe it's true that nothing good lasts forever, but I'd always assumed chardonnay was the exception. At its best, it goes from powerfully tart, food-friendly fruit flavors (apple, apple skins, pear, and raw quince) to an unceasing, arm-chilling nuttiness that I believe might actually resemble the outer limits of the universe (this tasting note has proven difficult to test). But at its worst, it actually tastes like chardonnay. And there's the big risk that Chablis runs. Save for the hot (weather and business) run in 1990, common Chablis--almost by rule (but not)--judiciously, if not parsimoniously, uses new oak. The point is, they're never slipping one past us. This isn't overpriced Cali chardonnay. It's not over-delicious Meursault. It's just the grape. Chardonnay. Which tastes like apples. No secrets. And, if you believe, sometimes the earth. Terroir. Whatever. I still believe there's a secret vial of chalk butter roux that the Chablisienne slip into their aged barrels. Or maybe all Chablis is made by student teachers and hall monitors after third-period French lit, dusting the erasers clean. Regardless, nine years in, the fruit's dead in this Noyers single vineyard bottling, which means it's all over. There's no creamy spiced oak coming out, no dank woody perfume. Just some apple--no better or worse than a fall lunch in the park--with the slightest finish of butter, and a fatigued sense of "who cares anyway?" More like an old albarino than Chablis. Shocking, maybe, or short-sighted of me, considering the provenance--a vintage that the brilliant wine writer Andrew Jefford rated as one of the greatest Chablis of all time, on par with the historic 1990. Perhaps ages and ages hence, I'll turn up another dusty bottle and find to everyone's great surprise all the complex flavors I was looking for were there, just hiding in the woodwork. Or maybe in Chablis there is no such place to hide.

00 Andrew Will, Sheridan Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon

Finally, an American cabernet that doesn't have "gobs" of anything. Built first on structure -- a righteous balance of acid and smoky, fine-grained tannins -- it's consistently expressive on all accounts. The flavors extend the normal presence of cabernet. The cocoa is elastic; the leather cured beneath the Texan sun. And the fruit flavor isn't just of cassis, but of burnt raisins that remember they were once ripe grapes.

09, Wine and Spirits Top 100

While I often question the purpose of these lists, the truth is, they're very necessary. And maybe for me the problem's never been that they exist, but instead why. When I first started in the wine business, I was greener than some of the chardonnays I would come to love, and so blanketed myself in that cold alleyway of wine knowledge with reams of wine mags. At the time, this blog was loosely called a zine. And, even knowing nothing, I knew some things could never make sense. I had famous blunders myself--once loudly proclaiming in a crowd of real live people that no Champagne in the world could challenge the world's best, um, beer. You had to give it to me. The little kid had heart. You don't teach heart. But you could, apparently, teach damp, moldy soullessness, then known as "Perfection in Piedmont," the November 30, 2003 issue of Wine Spectator magazine. The accessible, wildly perfumed vintage may very well have been perfection, but it was that all-or-nothing attitude that I took issue with. And though Mr. James Suckling knew an awful lot more about wine than I did, the two of us had the same fatal flaw. We would stop at nothing to, in the words of Dave Chappelle, just keep it real. But wine is a university of passionate ideas, tangential tracks united by the major that each one, though fallible, is worth pursuing for at least a few years. So I come to hate these haughty, often self-righteous lists for starting to suggest that maybe everything's not worth trying. Here are your 90-point wines, make pot roast with the rest. But we ultimately need some direction, provided our egos would exercise discretion. You don't want to buy every wine. And my accountant won't let me. It's why wine blogs, for all their failings, have done so well these past few years. Why even books polemically against the canonized rating systems themselves guide readers into purchasing specific bottles. So the that is just fine with me. We're not going to ever get around writing about wines. If a great bottle of wine should come with one accessory, it is not a corkscrew or VacuVin; it's a pencil, or maybe one dusty teletype as a nod to the modern age. And so naturally we'll rate them. But why we're doing this has to go past looking for headlines or trying to fill that void inside of us that looks for just one thing in this ridiculous world to be completely perfect. It's why I like almost the sheer surprise with which Wine and Spirits approaches its blind ratings, and the subtle gesture it makes by acknowledging not just the world's best wines, but the world's best wineries. Watching publisher Joshua Greene drink Cristal, a Champagne I've lauded beyond its PR successes as one of the greatest things in this universe (better, even, than beer), I couldn't help but notice how little he could talk about the wine and how much he and Gary Vaynerchuck talked about other things--rating systems among them. Unlike other tastings in the segment, the Cristal was a conduit for conversation--so good (Mr. Greene declaring the 2002 one of the four "perfect" wines he's ever had) it actually fell into the pastoral. As normally as there was a camera in front of them and a wall behind, these two men were drinking Cristal. And, oh yeah, it's perfect. And still Mr. Greene couldn't bring himself to call it the "best." Instead, he concluded, "this is the best--not the best--the most elegant and energetic wine that they make." What a tremendous reason to fall in love. This isn't how you talk about a wine; this was how you talked about Sophia Loren. It took a couple days of reading this to myself, but that may very well be my point. How can we look for wines to wow us with their 100-point personalities when the truly great wines of this world hardly ever speak so loud? Instead, they blend themselves into our surroundings--amaze us, no doubt, but in the way the final stroke of a brush completes a painting, the final reverb chord a score. And back to one. Wine and Spirits' list this year includes many of my favorite wineries, including L'Ecole No. 41, Krug, Ogier, Movia, Bruno Paillard, J.J. Prum, and Andrew Will. The issue hits stands October 13, and I intend to spend that fall night completely wrapped up in it.