My Top 10 Wines of 2024: Affordable Gems & Iconic Bottles

Hi everybody! This is Agnes from No Sediment and today let's discover and taste my top 10 wines of 2024. A while ago I made a video about Wine Spectator's top 10 wines of 2024. In that video I asked if you would like me to create my own top 10 list of their top 100. But many of you said that you would rather see my personal top 10 wines. So here we are. In all honesty there is no way I can compete with Wine Spectator. They have a team of experts tasting hundreds of wines per week throughout the year and it is safe to assume that they do not pay for the samples or delivery fees. Moreover, many of them likely have close relationships with winemakers and a good understanding of their philosophy and winemaking styles. There is simply no way that I could have the same reach, experience or taste as many wines over the year as they do. Therefore my list will consist of some of the highlights I personally have tasted this year. So for preparing this video I started reflecting on my wine experiences throughout 2024. I realized that there are some great wines I would love to include in my top 10 of 2024 and of course some that are best left to be unmentioned. I also wanted to highlight some more affordable wines here. While they may not always compete with three-digit labels, in my opinion they offer fantastic quality within the price category they are in. That said, I also included few more premium wines I have tasted this year because let's be honest they are exceptional and we should not penalize them only because they are expensive. As we reveal these wines I will be tasting 8 out of 10. The reason for this is simple one of the wines has been already tasted here on camera and the other one is reserved for a future video. And please feel free to join the conversation and share your wine highlights of 2024 in the section below. But now off to my top 10 wines of 2024. Wine number 10, Carles Andreou Cava Gran Reserva Brut Nature Vintage 2020. Cava has struggled with its image for quite some time. In all honesty I have personally been disappointed so often by mediocre Cava that I often choose other sparkling wines instead. I first discovered Carles Andreou Cava at ProWine Wine Fair and I approached the tasting being quite skeptical. But I was completely taken away by the purity of fruit, freshness and liveliness these Cavas offered. This particular one is a vintage Cava aged for 39 months on the lease and it averages well below 15 euros. It is an absolute steal. They also offer Reserva labels that can be found under 10 euros per bottle. I have to admit though I still don't know how I feel about this label. Maybe I am being a little too harsh. Let me know what you think. But now I will open it. Beautiful lemon color and as I mentioned before it does show that purity, that freshness of fruit. It is really ripe fruit. It is more of stone fruit, fresh peaches, apricots, dried orange peel and dried oranges. And it also has that flowery character like dried orange blossom. It is so so inviting. One difference here with maybe champagnes is that it is not as briochey or lazy driven. It does show more fruit on the nose. So for those who prefer more fruit driven style this Cava is amazing. Let's taste it. Creamy, playful bubbles, not at all aggressive, really pearly, beautiful on the palate. It has lively juicy acidity but this is Brutonateur so there is no sugar added. And I am usually not a fan of Brutonateur styles but this one is just packed with ripe fruit flavors. So it really does not need that sugar addition. 11.5% alcohol. I mean it is amazing summer drink and of course you can pop this open in the new years to come. I will give this Cava 90 points. Shall we move to wine number nine? Wine number nine Chateau Robin 2019 Vintage. This wine is a perfect example why searching for hidden gems it is best to explore paths less traveled. Located in the Castillon Côte de Bordeaux which has very similar soils to those of Saint-Emilion, Clay and Limestone but offers incredible value at the fraction of price. Chateau Robin also has family ties with some of the most sought-after estates on the right bank of Bordeaux and knowing the quality I wonder if that might change in the near future. This 2018 Vintage is based on Merlot with small additions of Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec all aged in French oak barrels for 12 to 18 months. I have been thinking for a while now about making a video about value Bordeaux because trust me Bordeaux offers great value. So I will save opening Chateau Robin for that video. Wine number eight Famille Libaud Muscadet Sèvres et Maines Clisson 2021 Vintage. The history of this estate actually starts quite tragically with an abandoned child left on the doorsteps of the hospital. Not knowing child's name he was given the name Libaud meaning beautiful place. This happened in 1816 the child was adopted and raised by a Vigneron family. Clisson was one of the first crew in Muscadet Sèvres et Maines appellation recognized for the quality of wine made in these unique granite soils. These wines truly show that Melon the grape behind Muscadet can produce great white wines especially when made by masterful hands as in this case Famille Libaud. As I reflected on the wines that I have tasted over the past year this Muscadet just kept coming back to me. Shall we taste it? It has a certain saline character to it like salted oyster shells I don't know just from the sea. And it almost has that kind of sea breeze in the glass. It is really beautiful on the nose. Fresh lively salted preserved lemon but also that sea breeze quality that freshness. And it also shows a bit of that kind of crushed oyster shell minerality. Let's taste it. Lively juicy packed with energy 2021 vintage was not particularly easy vintage. So for this wine to show a lot of that freshness and purity I mean they have done a great job. I really like this wine. I think because it has been aged so long on the lees it also shows that a bit of slight phenolic grip on the aftertaste. But I absolutely love it. And Muscadet they are usually packed with so much flavor and yet alcohol level rarely if ever creeps over 12.5. Melon is not the most aromatic grape but this just shows a lot of character and it definitely shows where it is coming from. Beautiful terroir driven wine. I will give this wine 92 points. Wine number seven is Bénédicte et Stéphane Tissot Trousseau Singulier Vintage 2022. Tissot is a producer in Jura France and it has always been close with their vineyards working organically as early as 1990s and fully converting to biodynamic in 2005 with certification from Demeter. They produce an impressive range of wines and sometimes it's easy to get lost in their selection. And their single vineyard Chardonnays alone deserve a video on their own. However, I have been especially excited about Trousseau. I have mentioned this at least in one other of my videos so you know I'm being sincere. While Trousseau is more commonly found in larger quantities under the name Bastardo in Portugal, it is the Jura example that I have fallen in love this year. It has quite aromatic nose and somehow I have a feeling it is because of really low dosage of SO2. Usually wines that have way lower SO2 added have this much brighter fruit driven nose. It is also really little manipulated and by manipulated I mean not heavily filtered because it does show some cloudiness on the appearance. It has really beautiful ripe strawberry, ripe raspberry nose but at the same time there is some earthiness like sweaty horse note on it, a leather hand, black earth. Wow! There's also some hints of toastiness and cigar box probably from aging in the wood. Let's taste this wine. Hint of spiciness, slightly piquant on the palate. At the same time still remaining that cherry freshness. It actually has that spiced cherry character on the aftertaste and it kind of stays there quite long. Beautiful chalky tannin, playful tannin, not in any way aggressive or grippy, just somewhere there playing on the aftertaste. I like it. It does not have that really high refreshing acidity but it is definitely more towards the balanced style, kind of creating harmonious mouthfeel on the palate. But what I love the most here in this wine is the nose. It is just so so intense, having that earthiness just playing together with ripe fruit flavors. And sometimes Trousseau can be too heavy. I have tasted some really deeply colored extracted full-bodied styles and this is not it. This kind of in its style is more similar to what you would expect from Pinot Noir, maybe just with a bit of lower acidity. Absolutely unique, low intervention, hands-off winemaking and showing some smokiness already. I mean this wine keeps developing in the glass. I will give it 92 points. I think it's a stunner. Wine 6 Franz Hirtzberger Grüner Weltliner Steinfeder Vintage 2023. Franz Hirtzberger is probably one of the best known names from Wachau, Austria. The estate is located in Spitz, the coolest part of Wachau, often devastated by late spring frosts. Hirtzberger has always been known to harvest their grapes late in the season, thus creating rich and concentrated wines. Even now when many producers are pushing their harvests earlier to retain acidity, they still value physiological ripeness. And that is why I fell in love with their Steinfeder. It has only 11.5% alcohol and yet packs so much fruit, varietal character and ripeness, all while maintaining freshness and liveliness. For me, it is important to taste the grape and link the wine to its origin. Sometimes when grapes are harvested too early to retain their acidity, they have not developed their varietal characteristics nor the expression of terroir. So, tasting this wine with such a low alcohol was a real treat. And today as well, it does show that fresh, quite ripe, stone fruit character, peaches, apricots, yellow plums and some white florals as well, some acacia. Of course, we don't have a lot of secondary notes here. This wine is not aged in oak, this wine has not been aged on its lees very young. It is made for immediate consumption and this is exactly what it delivers. Immediate pleasure, immediate appeal. Let's taste it. Upon tasting this wine, I just realized that so many white wines I have selected on my list actually have that phenolic grip, that phenolic aftertaste on the back palate. I don't know, maybe that's my preference, but here it is quite typical for the Grüner Waldliner grape variety. That phenolic grip we sometimes associate with chewing or crushing grape skin. But on the palate, this wine is a living proof that you can harvest for acidity and retain acidity without losing the freshness and opulence and ripeness of the fruit. It is the fruit that shines here and it is absolutely energetic and lively and fresh wine. I think next year until the summer or during maybe the summer is a perfect time to drink this wine. As I mentioned before, do not leave it in the cellars and wait for it to become better. It is as good as it gets at this very moment and I will give it 92 points. Half of the list down, another half to go. Wine number five is Bodegas Frontoño Super Sonico Vintage 2021. This wine comes with a story. I first discovered Bodegas Frontoño through an article in the Canter magazine, which featured a piece on the mavericks of the wine world. Fernando Amora's project was also there. Then, two years ago, in the Institute of Masters of Wine Symposium in Wiesbaden, Germany, I finally got a chance to taste his wines. I was so impressed that I kept talking them up to my colleague and friend Raymond Stomsons, also the world sommelier champion of 2023. When we finally got the opportunity to taste these wines together, he teased me, saying that I had talked them up so much that he wonders if they could actually live up to the high expectations I had set. You know me, I can get really excited about certain things. And as we were tasting, he leaned over to me and whispered that indeed these wines were as good as I was saying they were. So I present to you Bodegas Frontoño Super Sonico 100% Garnacha as my fifth place. Wow, it just has that tea leaf, that earl grey quality on the nose. It is really floral. It's something that you do not necessarily expect from Garnacha, always. But this wine is made from vineyards up in higher elevation. I think it's around 400 to more than 1000 meters above sea level in Aragon, from really old wines, bush-trained wines. And what I like about this project so much is that they work their vineyards with the respect to their land. They use permaculture, they use crop rotation, they use cover crops. And I do believe that health of the soil and health of the wine does present itself in the glass. It is opening up. In the beginning, I said it had that floral, that earl grey, that tea leaf quality. And now we start to see a bit of that fruit style, that strawberry, raspberry, ripe red cherry. A bit of smokiness as well. And that very classical and typical to Garnacha peppery hint. Let's taste this wine. Who said that Garnacha can sometimes lack acidity? This is packed with energy, packed with freshness. It is just so lively, beautiful, great wine. It also has that chalky tannin structure. Of course, Garnacha is not known for heavy, high levels of tannins. But it does have very playful, beautiful, structural, elemental tannin here. And it just adds great backbone to this wine. So fresh! I wonder if they have added or used stems in the winemaking. Because from the tasting, I would guess that that is the case. But overall, this is really great wine. And what a label, yeah? I like it a lot. Outside of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, you rarely see Garnacha or Grenache to be highlighted or showcased. So I really wanted to highlight this grape, because it can make beautiful wines. And for me, this was really easy, great wine. I will give it 93 points. Wine number four, Kumeyaay River, Mates Vineyard, Chardonnay, 2023 Vintage, Auckland. Maybe it's Matthijs Vineyard or Matisse Vineyard. I don't know. What I do know, that I perfectly can pronounce the surname of the family, which is Bryakovic family. I sometimes get frustrated when wines are constantly compared with a supposedly benchmark style or qualities of Burgundy or Bordeaux. And I am also not without a blame here. Everywhere you read about Kumeyaay River wines, they are constantly compared to those from Burgundy. But let's be clear. First, not every wine in Burgundy is of great quality or something that we should strive for. And second, Kumeyaay River has its own unique style and we should praise that. For Chardonnay lovers, Kumeyaay River is likely already a familiar name and doesn't need much introduction. It is also a frequent entry on many other top wine lists and for me too it earns a spot this year. And I already sneak peeked a smell so and it was just so beautiful. It is just something you could spend hours and hours smelling. It is fresh, you have preserved lemon, you have lime here, slight orange peel, melon, pear. You would consider that it is kind of fruit, bright fruit driven wine, but there's so much more to that fruit. It is really crystalline, it is really pure, kind of zesty, bursting type of fruit and that just adds it extra quality, extra layer. It's just so great. I mean it definitely has seen some lees aging, probably even some botanage, because we do have that fresh dough, that leesy character to it. But it is still not overpowering the fruit, it is still very zesty. There is really nothing oxidative here. This is reason why I don't necessarily link this style with Burgundy, because Burgundy sometimes has that kind of bruised apple, bruised pear quality and that is beautiful on its own, but this one is just purity of fruit in the glass, bursting with energy. Can I talk a bit more only about a nose without tasting it? Of course the nose is also inviting to taste, but I mean it is just so rich and so complex that you don't necessarily need to go there, but we will. Let's taste it. It seems much calmer, more rounded on the palate, riper on the palate, maybe not as energetic, not as nervy. It does show a bit of that apple peel character, slight grippy texture that we've been talking about the white wines of my top 10 a lot already. And tasting it now, I realized it definitely deserved its place in this top 10. It is absolute stunner. I will give this wine 96 points. Wine number three TINANELLO 2021 VINTAGE TUSCANY ITALY. So TINANELLO is one of those wines I will not be tasting this time, because I very recently tasted on camera for my Wine Spectator video and we all know how that went. On the palate it is just giving everything to you. It's just so lovely, juicy, fruit-driven. It is stunning wine. I will give this wine 98 points. For my palate this was just so inviting and generous wine despite its young age. It was just so open and seductive. For me it definitely deserved its place in Wine Spectator's top 10 of 2024 and I can only imagine that they tasted way more ultra-premium wines that I did over this year. So for sure I wanted to include this beauty in my own list as well, given the fact that even now, three weeks after tasting this wine, its ripe, fruit-driven, yet refreshing and grippy aftertaste still haunts me. Second place CHARTON TAIT ORSERI Champagne non-vintage. I could not complete my top 10 of 2024 without including at least one Champagne. Orseri is a new label from Charton Tait, a producer that's very dear to me. If you have watched my interview with Alexander Charton, you will remember him speaking about influence his mentor Anselm Salos has had on him and still does. He decided to invest in flot in Cote de Blanc so he would have vineyards to tend to when he goes and visits his wine godfather Anselm Salos. Alexander knows exactly how to make terroir-driven, pure styles of Champagne that at the same time give intense pleasure without being overly pretentious or intellectually demanding. If you remember what I said about the Cava when we were tasting in the very beginning of this video, I talked about how Cavas are more fruit-driven and then this Champagne is just great example how you have in front all that lazy, that brioche, that fresh dough character. At the same time, you still have that really ripe apple, white apple, not red, maybe green, but still ripe apple character, pear, white florals. This is just elegance. It is quiet luxury. I mean so much to offer, so complex, opening up second after second, offering something else. Now it starts to show some florals, white blossom, early spring flowers. I cannot wait to taste it. Let's taste it. I almost don't want to spit it out. It is just so complete and harmonious wine on the palate. It does have that orchard fruit character, it does have that lees aging, that secondary nose and on the palate as well, that depth of flavors coming from lees aging. It kind of just elongates the aftertaste. It helps to retain that aftertaste, that fruit on the palate, kind of pin it to your tongue. And saying all this, it still seems shy, but not shy in a way that the wine is closed, but shy in a way that it just kind of maybe slightly hiding, you know, and maybe doesn't want to reveal all of its beauty and purity at the same time. And the mousse, it is just so harmonious and pure. The way I speak about the wine changed from Kumio River to Chateaune-Tahit because with Kumio River it was just so intense and so nervy and it gave me energy. And here with this beautiful champagne, it kind of set me down, calmed me down and told me let's have a conversation, let's have an intellectual conversation, let's talk about stars, let's talk about planets. Yes, that wine, for sure. Second place, so happy to see you here. 98 points without a doubt. And the first place goes to, dum-dum-dum, Ken Forrester, the FMC Chenin Blanc from Stellenbosch Vintage 2021. I might have mentioned South African Chenin Blanc wines in one of my videos as a great value pearls for white wine lovers. Among the top producers to explore is Ken Forrester, whose nickname fittingly is Mr. Chenin and his FMC is an absolute stunner. Whether FMC stands for Forrester Maynard Chenin or magnificent Chenin, I guarantee you this wine plays in the platinum league. And the best part, it will not leave you broke. And I am super excited to open it up and taste as my wine number one of 2024. Wow, they are really careful with their grape harvest. I was laughing when I read because on the back label it says obviously harvested by hands. And I thought, oh, that's a nice way to put it. And they actually go through vineyards on several occasions. And sometimes grapes harvested had a little bit of botrytis. And when there's a small percentage of botrytis grapes added to a dry wine, it can add extra complexity on the nose. It can give that saffron and that honeysuckle and that beeswax character. And it does have a hint of that. It has a chamomile note, I just noticed. It's such a beautiful honeyed chamomile tea. But I do have that very typical aroma of wool, of that fresh wool on the nose here as well. It is something that usually links me to the Chenin and directly to the South Africa. What is with these wines? This wine, the FMC, Chardonnay and Kumio River, they all had that depth of flavor on the nose that kind of, I don't know, it's just kind of layers after layers and layers. And it just keeps opening up. It's like peeling an onion. It just has so many dimensions. This palate just takes me back to the moment when I first tasted this wine. You know, it was in a crowded place and there was a lot of wines to be tasted, but no one was really paying attention. It was the evening and everyone just wanted, you know, taste this, taste that, getting a bit tipsy. But this wine just stopped you, grabbed your attention and said, here, this is me. I am not just someone you can just taste and pass through. You have to pay attention to me. You have to taste me. You have to talk with me. And this is exactly what it is doing right now. I mean, it just grabs your attention. It grabs your palate. It takes over. And all this time I'm talking with you and telling you this, I still feel the aftertaste of chamomile tea, of that beeswax character, a bit of lees aging that maybe makes this wine a bit fuller, a bit richer and roundens the fresh and zesty acidity spikes of this wine. Because, you know, Chenin Blanc has really high acidity. It tends to develop almost painfully high acidity. But here, this wine is just beautifully balanced. Never ending aftertaste. Some of that toastiness, like toasted bread, freshly baked brioche. That's here. Beautiful. Ripe appley, slightly bruised apple character though. I love this wine. I will give this wine 98 points. And it definitely deserves to be on the top spot of my list. Thank you guys for tuning in on this absolute ambitious video where I, for the first time ever in my life, tasted eight wines on camera. Let me know, have you tasted these wines? Or have I sparked interest for you to taste some of these wines? And don't forget to comment about your top wines this year. If you like this video, you might also like my take on Wine Spectator's top 10 of 2024. So make sure to watch this next.