This year, I spent a couple of months in New Zealand tasting, visiting wineries and interviewing winemakers. I also spent time working in my tiny vineyard in Martinborough as well as introducing my new associate editor, Ryan Montgomery, to the Kiwi wine scene.

Over the last 12 months, my team and I rated more than 1,000 New Zealand wines – our biggest number ever – and we found some truly great wines released in 2024 from both the North and South Islands. We were a little concerned that some winemakers might have found it difficult to produce good wines, considering the cool and stormy growing season in 2023, which severely affected regions such as Hawke's Bay, Gisborne and, to a lesser extent, Wairarapa.

However, we discovered some outstanding wines from the vintage, particularly from key areas in the South Island, such as Central Otago and Marlborough. Other vintages currently available on the market this year also delivered superb bottles across all regions, as you will see in the list below.

What we continued to admire this year during our tastings was the outstanding definition and unique character of New Zealand's best wines. Their cool-climate nature is becoming increasingly unique in the world due to volatile weather patterns and increased heat and sun exposure in vineyards, particularly in Europe and the United States.

The best wines of New Zealand today have hallmark traits of freshness and vibrancy, with lower alcohol levels than wines from many other countries and regions in a given vintage. They communicate a unique sense of place, terroirs and microclimates – whether reds (52 of our Top 100), whites (42 wines), dessert wines (three bottles), or sparklings (also three).

The only downside is that many of the very best are made in extremely limited quantities, which is why our Top 100 includes several small-production wines, such as our New Zealand Wine of the Year: the phenomenal Bell Hill Chardonnay North Canterbury Single Parcel Limeworks 2020. This 100-point white tastes like it could come straight out of the Burgundy region of Puligny-Montrachet – something akin to the premier cru of Les Pucelles – but it has a distinctive energy from the intense acidity (low pH), perhaps from its calcareous soils. Its few thousand vines are literally planted in a former lime quarry, producing wines of remarkable energy and distinction.

With this in mind, I decided not to limit this year’s New Zealand list to wines with 500 cases or more – at least not in our Top 10. It was important to highlight some of the best bottles from this island nation as well as more readily available ones, so readers can better understand the quality of New Zealand wines.

“Our soils are unique, to say the least,” said Marcel Giesen of Bell Hill, who, with his wife, Sherwyn Veldhuizen, cultivates a few hectares of chardonnay and pinot noir in the South Island region of Canterbury, about an hour’s drive from Christchurch. “They are very diverse for such a small place.”

Ryan and I spent a morning last month walking the various vineyards of Bell Hill with Giesen and Veldhuizen, reviewing their soils, microclimates, and aspects of the sun. It was breathtaking to better understand their terroir and dedication to excellence in viticulture.

Only a couple of 225-liter barrels of The Limeworks 2020 were made, or about 600 bottles. I hate to use the cliche, but wines like these are a drop in the bucket compared with the millions of liters of wine made each year in New Zealand – 284 million in 2024. About 70 percent of that is cheap sauvignon blanc from anonymous, high-yielding vineyards, mostly in the Marlborough region, according to government statistics.

It’s important to note that many wines in our Top 100 list carry single-vineyard designations. These wines tell a different story about New Zealand’s wine culture that more people should know. “Our challenge is getting those stories out there and telling people about vineyard sites,” said Stu Marfell, chief winemaker of Vavasour Winery in Marlborough.

Our Top 10 wines certainly highlight what he says. Here are a few names that represent single vineyards: Limeworks, Block 5, Snake’s Tongue, Clayvin Vineyard and Wrekin. Others come from estate vineyards or parcels, such as the Hans Herzog Estate Nebbiolo Marlborough 2016 and the Pegasus Bay Pinot Noir Waipara Valley Aged Release 2015.

It’s interesting to note that the JamesSuckling.com Wine of the Year in 2021 was a 100-point chardonnay from a single vineyard: the Kumeu River Chardonnay Kumeu Mate’s Vineyard 2020. The wine recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. So, single vineyards are not new to New Zealand.

What’s also not new to New Zealand are the great prices many of their best wines sell for. In the list below, about 50 percent are priced at $30 or less per bottle. The value and quality in the bottle are terrific, especially considering the price increases for the best wines of the world over the last three or four years.

The fact that we can buy so many great wine bargains in New Zealand makes the time and effort we spend reporting and tasting there all the more worthwhile. I hope you enjoy the list below and can find a few of these gems.

– James Suckling, Editor/Chairman

Note: The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated in 2024 by the tasters at JamesSuckling.com. You can sort the wines by vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.