Riesling wines from the 2023 vintage in Germany and Austria once again starred in our monthly tastings of 2,398 bottles, with three perfect scorers from the two neighboring countries anchoring a deep vintage that also featured high-scoring offerings of blaufrankisch, gruner veltliner and chardonnay.

We remained on course to hit our goal of tasting more than 40,000 wines for the year by rating 2,754 bottles in September from a record 22 countries. with offerings from Italy, Germany, Austria, the U.S. and Spain leading the way.

Call them the Delicious Dozen. That’s the 12 wines the JamesSuckling.com tasting team gave perfect scores to in August out of the 3,789 in total we rated during the month, when much of our work was done in some of the world’s most popular wine countries.

Only a handful of wines rose to the very top of the 3,171 bottles we rated in July, with our perfect scorers revealing a Teutonic turn toward excellence.

Our June tastings of 3,414 wines from a staggering 22 countries included seven bottles we gave perfect scores to and 18 that notched 99s. The 100-pointers included three from Bordeaux – all 2021 Sauternes wines – two from Burgundy and two from California.