The Wine Knows

Most wine publications have year-end top 100 lists, etc. We do it a little differently at Wine Press Northwest. We invite Northwest wineries to send their gold medal-winning wines to us, then we bring in top judges from around the country to evaluate them.

We call it the Platinum Judging, and this marks our eighth year of conducting it.

This year, we received 258 wines - our most ever - out of about 400 eligible. The wines are tasted single-blind: We know what variety or style they are but not the producers. Thus, we can end up with some very interesting results.

This year, for example, we had four wines finish tied for No. 1. That's the first time this has happened. Three were from Washington grapes, and one was from Oregon. Two were reds, one was a cool-climate white, and one was a rosé.

It's our way of helping to determine the "best of the best in the Great Northwest." No, it doesn't take into account those wines that aren't entered in competitions. But we do include wines that have earned "Outstanding" ratings in any of our three annual single-blind peer-group judgings. In fact, one of those that tied for the top got into the Platinum that way.

Over the next few weeks, I'll use the Platinum Judging results as blog fodder here. Once you download and see the list, you'll see why we'll have some interesting things to chat about.

You can download the PDF and take a look for yourself.