Last year was the biggest tasting year of my career as a wine critic and the most extensive ever for JamesSuckling.com. With my team of tasters, seven in total, we rated 41,063 wines in 2023. A large part was reviewed in our offices in Hong Kong and Italy as well as other parts of the world, where we also visited wineries and vineyards and interviewed winemakers. I think we all accumulated more air miles than any other wine media as a group and it was done on our own dime.
Of the tasting notes posted on our site last year, 39,680 were from bottle and 1,383 were from barrel.
Much of the wine we reviewed last year came from Italy and France, accounting for 9,175 and 7,048 tasting notes, respectively. U.S. wines were the next biggest category with 4,435, followed by Spain at 4,143. Australia wasn’t far behind with 3,099 wines tasted and then Argentina with 2,390 and Chile with 1,521. Germany was next at 1,956 wines while Austria comprised 1,048 reviews. South Africa, Portugal, and New Zealand were grouped close together with 905, 845, and 790, respectively. We tasted almost 500 wines from China as well as 288 from Hungary and about 200 each from Japan, Greece and Uruguay.